'SNL 1975' Cast Additions Include J. K. Simmons, Nicholas Braun, Andrew Barth Feldman
There have been three rounds of cast announcements since I was last able to cover it, let’s get to it.
It’s time to play “What’s That Name?” as the film with the working title SNL 1975, about the events immediately leading up to the premiere of legendary late night comedy series Saturday Night Live continues to film and its casting news gets out there. Another 11 actors have been named to the cast as familiar figures, on top of the 10 already revealed that included the Not Ready For Primetime Players.
March 7 saw it reported that Nicholas Braun, Tommy Dewey, and Nicholas Podany had been cast. Dewey, known for starring in the Hulu series Casual and voicing Stu Pickles in the ongoing reboot of Rugrats, recently starring in and executive producing the Sundance-premiering film Your Monster, had been cast as Michael O’Donoghue, SNL’s first head writer. Podany, who has played Harry’s son Albus Potter on Broadway in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is playing beloved comedian Billy Crystal, who at this point in his career is still a couple of years from his Soap breakout. The reason he is here is because Crystal was hired to do six episodes, intended to lead to something bigger. However, the first sketch he wrote was truncated and pushed to the back. His people got in a heated argument with show creator Lorne Michaels, who will be played by Gabriel LaBelle in the film. Ultimately, they pulled him from the show entirely just an hour before dress rehearsal.
Braun’s casting became…rather objectionable. Not that he had done anything wrong, but he was initially reported as playing beloved Muppets creator Jim Henson, who created the Muppets, including those for the The Land of Gorch segments infamously part of SNL’s first season. People were excited about the casting, and Braun, known for playing Cousin Greg on the HBO series Succession, and to Disney Channel fans for his role in Minutemen, marked the announcement with an Instagram post he captioned “The legend! 🐸 🐥 🐽” . It made it all the more confusing when filming pics surfaced, and he was not only beardless, but in an outfit and carrying a prop belonging to comedian and Taxi star Andy Kaufman, who performed in the episode. No correction, retraction, or confirmation has been publicly made by the involved parties. Maybe it’s a Kaufman-esque prank. Check out the clip below.
The footage released a certain other casting: Finn Wolfhard, the Stranger Things star who has worked with director and co-writer Jason Reitman and other co-writer Gil Kenan on Ghostbusters: Afterlife and the just-released Frozen Empire starring as Trevor Spengler, in the smaller role of an NBC page. His casting was more officially reported with No Hard Feelings star Andrew Barth Feldman, who is playing writer and talent coordinator Neil Levy, and Kaia Gerber, who is playing inaugural host Chevy Chase’s then-girlfriend Jacqueline Carlin. Gerber was another breakout from the high school sex comedy Bottoms alongside Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, the latter of whom stars here as Rosie Shuster, one of the show's writers and Michaels's then-wife. Her next project, the Apple TV+ comedy series Palm Royale was developed by Laura Dern, starring alongside her and SNL alum Kristen Wiig, and it premiered on the service last Wednesday.
Monday saw what was declared the “final additions”, consisting of Academy Award winner the multiverse’s most frequent J. Jonah Jameson, and January 31, 2015 episode host J. K. Simmons, Billy Bryk, Joe Chrest, Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg. Among Simmons’s prolific career, Simmons has become something of a frequent Reitman collaborator, with significant roles in Juno, Thank You for Smoking and Up in the Air, as well as what’s considered a cameo in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. He’ll be playing…Milton Berle?!?! No I don’t know what he’s doing here either. Bryk has 6 episodes of Wynonna Earp, a small role in Afterlife, and his friendship with Wolfhard garnering a couple of credits to his name, but his role here is unknown. Chrest, who’s playing has also worked with Wolfhard, playing Mike’s father Ted Wheeler on Stranger Things, and he’s also appeared in Killers of the Flower Moon and Lisa Frankenstein. Gray, best known as the voice of Ezra Bridger on Star Wars Rebels, enters his Al Franken millennium to play the comedian who was initially teamed with Tom Davis, who Gregg will play as the writer-performer duo Franken & Davis. Franken would contribute to the show in front of and behind the scenes over the next twenty years.
In addition to LaBelle and Sennott, they join Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Dylan O’ Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fair as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Reitman and Kenan’s script is based on an extensive series of interviews they conducted with all surviving cast, writers, and crew. It is also part of their overall production deal with Sony Pictures. They produce with Jason Blumenfeld, Erica Mills and Peter Rice.
