'SNL 1975' Casts Leander Suleiman As Writer Anne Beatts

Another original writer has been cast! Now where’s our George Carlin?

It’s been a while since we’d gotten casting news for Jason Reitman’s film about the chaotic premiere night of NBC’s long-running sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, currently working under the title SNL 1975, but it seems someone in the writers’ room has been identified. Leander Suleiman is set to play Anne Beatts in the growing ensemble.

Suleiman has appeared in two episodes of Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias as Dr. Manal Ahmed, the show’s first hijabi character. She’s also played doctors on Peacock’s Killing It starring Craig Robinson and HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. She’s also appeared in the Paramount+ and Netflix film The In Between and dabbled in superhero fare with two episodes of DC’s Stargirl and playing Yolanda in the second episode of Marvel Studios’s Echo.

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Beatts wrote for Saturday Night Live’s first four seasons. She went on to create the cult classic single-season CBS sitcom Square Pegs starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker from 1982. She died in April 2021 at the age of 74. So far, the other writers the film has cast include The Fabelmans’s Gabrielle LaBelle as series creator (and initial co-head writer) Lorne Michaels, Tommy Dewey as other co-head writer Michael O’Donoghue, Andrew Barth Feldman as Neil Levy, who was also talent coordinator, Taylor Gray and Mcabe Gregg as Al Franken and Tom Davis, Cory Michael Smith as original cast member Chevy Chase, Stranger Things’s Joe Chrest as Herb Sargent, and Rachel Sennott as Rosie Schuster.

The cast also features Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, as well as Nicholas Braun as either Jim Henson (as reported) or Andy Kaufman (as spotted), Nicholas Podany as almost-onscreen but still-future cast member Billy Crystal, Jon Batiste and Naomi McPherson as original musical guests Billy Preston and Janis Ian, Willem Dafoe as executive David Tebet, Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page, J. K. Simmons as Milton Berle, and Kaia Gerber as Jacqueline Carlin.

Reitman is not only directing but teams again with his Ghostbusters: Afterlife co-writer (and Frozen Empire director) Gil Kenan for a script 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 the studio. They produce with Jason Blumenfeld and Peter Rice, while Erica Mills and Joann Perritano are executive producers.

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Source: Deadline