“I’m not gonna tell him to like, shut up”: A Meeting With Steven Spielberg Left ‘Saturday Night’ Star Gabriel LaBelle Uncomfortable For a Justifiable Reason

Directed by Jason Reitman, Saturday Night is an upcoming biographical comedy-drama movie starring Gabriel LaBelle, Dylan O’Brien, Cory Michael Smith, and more. The movie follows the events of what happened 90 minutes before Saturday Night’s (now known as Saturday Night Live) premiere in 1975.

The movie premiered at the 51st Telluride Film Festival, where it received a positive response, and is now set to premiere worldwide on October 11, 2024. The release date of the movie marks Saturday Night Live’s 49th anniversary. Actor Gabriel LaBelle shared with Jimmy Fallon about one person who advised him about the character despite the filmmaker asking them not to dig deep.

Gabriel LaBelle recalls one awkward meeting with Steven Spielberg

Gabriel LaBelle is stepping into the shoes of Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels for his upcoming biographical comedy-drama movie Saturday Night. He recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where the host asked him if filmmaker Steven Spielberg had any advice to give to him before he started filming for the movie. LaBelle shared,

We were doing like costume fittings at the Universal lot, and his Amblin office is there, and we’d been texting a little bit, and I’m like, ‘Hey, I’m going to be there, like if you’re there, let’s catch up.’ And he said, ‘Sure.’. So after one of my fittings, I just walked into his office, and it was good to see him. As soon as I sit down, he’s like, ‘So, this is what I know about Saturday Night Live’.

The actor said that Spielberg was well connected to the people who worked at Saturday Night Live back in the day, and the filmmaker was there at the studio for the first episode premiere. The young actor revealed that Spielberg loved the show so much that every Friday for the entire first season he would fly to New York to watch the show, and then fly back to L.A. on Sunday. LaBelle continued,

So he told me stories of everyone. And I was so—it was amazing, but I was uncomfortable because Jason Reitman didn’t want me to talk to anybody who was there. But I’m not going to tell him to, like, shut up.

Gabriel LaBelle had shared earlier in the interview that the director wanted the cast members to do as little work as possible because he didn’t want to direct the re-creations of the cast members.

The young actor had previously portrayed the role of Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical movie The Fabelmans. He was highly lauded for his performance and has stayed close with the filmmaker since.

Gabriel LaBelle shares his first day on the set of Saturday Night

In his interview with IndieWire, the young actor was asked about his first day on the set of his upcoming movie. LaBelle mentioned that co-star Ella Hunt had shared a video of them and Reitman walking into Lorne’s office built on set, and added that he looks like a six-year-old boy walking into a giant Christmas present. He further added,

I never had this in my own house, but every once in a while, you know how you go over to a friend’s house whose older brother had just a giant hamster cage with tubes going everywhere, and it looks like this super fun thing? I was always weirdly jealous of the hamster to get to play around in that thing. And it felt like that, because every room, every compartment was something really colorful and perfectly designed. We lived there for two months.

The actor revealed that Lorne Michaels invited them to watch the Josh Brolin episode live, and it was great. He noted that he got to speak to the creator briefly after the show, adding that they didn’t talk much because the director & producer of the movie along with Scarlett Johansson were there, so he let them have a conversation.

Gabriel LaBelle added that Lorne Michaels has been very kind and congratulatory to the filmmaker, but he does not know if the Saturday Night Live creator had watched their movie.

Saturday Night releases on October 11, 2024.