Dylan O’Brien Addresses Dan Aykroyd’s Awkward Reaction to His ‘Saturday Night’ Casting

One of the biggest concerns fans likely have about Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Live biopic is the casting. After all, it’s easy to hire an actor to play Napoleon or Abraham Lincoln because none of us grew up watching Lincoln on late-night television. Saturday Night, on the other hand, had the daunting task of finding actors to play comic performers whose faces and voices have been burned into our psyches over the past several decades.

While the movie certainly has some issues, the cast isn’t one of them. Most of the actors succeed at embodying their real-life counterparts without falling into the trap of doing a broad impersonation. One of the best of the bunch is Dylan O’Brien, who plays Dan Aykroyd back in the days when he was just an unknown performer who still kept all his theories about erotic ghost encounters to himself.

Despite the fact that Aykroyd is still alive, and clearly loves to talk, O’Brien never hung out with the Ghostbusters star because Reitman specifically told the cast not to meet with their IRL counterparts. While not everybody complied, O’Brien took his director’s advice. “I’m the only one who did the homework, by not doing the homework,” the actor told Variety.

While O’Brien and Aykroyd never met, Aykroyd was asked about the casting choice during the premiere of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. And his response was, well, a little weird. For starters, Aykroyd claimed that he hadn’t been in contact with Reitman about the film, which seemingly contradicts the director’s previous suggestion that he interviewed “everyone who was alive in the building that night” while writing the script. “I don’t think he wants any undue influence,” Aykroyd explained.

When asked what he thought of the choice of O’Brien to play a younger version of himself, Aykroyd responded, “I’m just glad the young actor got work. If he’s compelled to play me — well, I’m glad he got work.” Which is kind of an odd thing to say about an actor who has already starred in a popular werewolf-based teen drama and a blockbuster film franchise. 

O’Brien recently appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers (just down the hall from the real Studio 8H) to promote Saturday Night. After complimenting the actor on doing “a good young Dan Aykroyd,” Meyers brought up the fact that Aykroyd had “spoken about” O’Brien. “I heard he was happy for you,” Meyers prompted.

O’Brien then recounted Aykroyd’s comments, which he apparently “loved,” before noting, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, “if anything, it made me feel really connected to him, as far as our inner souls.”

Meyers tried to defend the “sweet” Aykroyd’s seemingly condescending comments. “Down to the studs, Dan Aykroyd is genuinely just happy people are working,” he suggested. 

“One hundred percent. And I just really resonated with that response,” O’Brien added.

Come to think of it, O’Brien should probably just be happy that Aykroyd didn’t try to turn the interview into a plug for his vodka company. 

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