Jason Reitman’s upcoming SNL 1975 has added Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) to its large ensemble cast.
SNL 1975 will bring viewers back to Saturday Night Live‘s premiere date in 1975 and follow the 90 minutes before the live taping in real-time, recounting the chaotic drama leading up to the moment cameras began rolling. The film will be directed by Reitman from a script he co-wrote with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan.
According to Deadline, Dafoe will play NBC executive David Tebet, who served as the VP of Talent Relations when SNL premiered.
SNL 1975 is based on an extensive series of interviews Reitman and Kenan conducted with all the living cast members, writers and crew of the original SNL team. Reitman and Kenan are producing alongside Jason Blumenfeld, Erica Mills and Peter Rice. As of now, there is no release date for the film.
Dafoe is perhaps best known for his role as Spider-Man villain Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, a role he reprised for the MCU’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. His recent credits include Poor Things, Inside, Asteroid City and The Boy and the Heron. He will be seen next in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
On October 11, 1975, a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television forever. SNL 1975 is the true story of what happened behind the scenes that night in the moments leading up to the first broadcast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. It depicts the chaos and magic of a revolution that almost wasn’t, counting down the minutes in real time to the infamous words, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
SNL 1975 stars Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels, Cooper Hoffman as Dick Ebersol, Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, Kim Matula as Jane Curtin, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd, Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris, Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Matt Wood as John Belushi, Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson, Tommy Dewey as Michael O’Donoghue, Nicholas Podany as Billy Crystal and Willem Dafoe as David Tebet.
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