The Movie That Taught 'Saturday Night's Chevy Chase the Most About Chevy Chase

The cast of Saturday Night, the movie chronicling the hours leading up to the first-ever episode of SNL, is receiving great reviews for their ensemble work. But many critics are singling out Cory Michael Smith for his portrayal of Chevy Chase, the show’s first breakout star. Director Jason Reitman didn’t want his actors talking to the real people they portrayed, but Smith told CinemaBlend that other sources were particularly instructive. 

First up: Foul Play, the first movie Chase made after skyrocketing to stardom. The romantic caper co-starring Goldie Hawn was a big hit, cementing the Chase’s future in the movies.

“So cool. And it’s a great movie,” Smith said. “But I did notice there’s a different quality of him in Foul Play than other films. It’s his first feature, and you can sort of feel him exploring and figuring stuff out. It’s like he’s not doing sketch comedy. He’s doing a proper Hollywood film, with a star like Goldie Hawn. And I do see moments in that performance of like, ‘Oh, that’s an actor doing his first feature. I can see that, and I kind of love that.’”

But that was Performance Chevy. What about the other guy? “As I was studying him and who he was, one of the things that I had to really look for and pay attention to was who is the Chevy that’s performing, and who is the Chevy off-screen?” Smith explained. “And I was always looking for moments of nervousness, or vulnerability.”

That meant compulsive Chevy Chase viewing for months, Smith confessed to Variety. Chase’s early interviews were the most helpful in terms of those vulnerable moments. “His first time on Johnny Carson,” Smith said, “he comes out and he’s really nervous.”

The cocksure comic was definitely Not Ready for Prime Time. “Johnny asks him a question and he answers with, ‘I do,’ and it has nothing to do with the question. Everyone pauses and Johnny laughs in his face suddenly. Everyone is just laughing at Chevy, and he’s flustered.”

Carson, who would later feel threatened by Chase’s emergence as a possible Tonight Show successor, playfully took it to the young comic. “Johnny’s like, ‘Let me tell you how this is going to work — I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer in relation to that question.’

“And (Chevy) goes, ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah.’

“I was like, Oh my God,” Smith said. 

Those were the small moments that made his compulsive Chase viewing worthwhile, where “you can actually see, ‘Oh, that’s Chevy humiliated,’ and I can use that.”