‘Saturday Night’ Star Cory Michael Smith Channels a More Human Chevy Chase [VIDEO]

For over a decade, Cory Michael Smith has shown his tremendous range and versatility in all mediums.

He is currently co-starring as Chevy Chase in Jason Reitman’s ensemble comedy, Saturday Night, a madcap, dizzying account of the first broadcast of Saturday Night Liveon October 11, 1975.

The non-stop cinematic rollercoaster also stars Dylan O’Brien as Dan Ackroyd, Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner and Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels.

During SNL’s first season, Chase became an overnight sensation and would go on to make quite a number of movies (his first, Foul Play, being, arguably, his best in 1978) and enjoy a successful, if spotty career. But Reitman’s film features a Chase before the deluge of hosannahs, when he was a struggling comedian, ego still (somewhat) in check. Smith manages something miraculous, giving us the early Chase many people remember (or can easily see on YouTube and TikTok), but adding additional layers of vulnerability as well as a surface fearlessness. The actor basically creates a brand-new Chase, while also paying homage to the Chevy of yore.

This isn’t surprising considering just how chameleon-like Smith is whether he’s delightfully camping it up as The Riddler in the Fox series, Gotham, channeling the closeted WW2-era American journalist Varian Fry in the highly underrated Netflix series, Transatlantic or deviously embodying the pissed-off, man-boy, singer-wannabe in Todd Haynes’s terrific May December.

His other film credits include, Damien Chazelle’s First Man, Yen Tang’s 1985 (both 2018), as well as two other Todd Haynes movies, Carol (2015) and Wonderstruck (2017).

Smith graduated from Otterbein University and, in 2012, took NYC by storm, first starring opposite Jason Butler Harner in Mike Bartlett’s witty and wild off-Broadway play, Cock (a West End transfer) and then originating the role of Elder Thomas in Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale at Playwrights Horizons. Early in 2013, he made his Broadway debut, opposite Game of Thrones’ star Emilia Clarke in Richard Greenberg’s adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The show closed early but Smith’s performance was a season stand-out.

In 2017, the thesp took on the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and killed it (!) in the New York City Center Encores! Series concert version of the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical, Assassins.

Up next, Smith will begin filming Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value opposite Trier’s Worst Person in the World star, Renate Reinsve as well as Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård.

The Contending had a grand time Zoom chatting with Smith about Saturday Night and his career.

Saturday Night is now in theaters and is available to buy or rent online.