Fans may or may not see New Girl vet Lamorne Morris taking the stage as one of the upcoming SNL guest hosts (or musical guests, I suppose) during the Fall TV season, theater-goers will absolutely be able to catch the actor’s talents on display in Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. In the not-quite-a-biopic, Morris portrays comedian Garrett Morris, the sketch comedy’s first Black cast member, and it’s a casting position that he’s been able to relate to.
It’s an interesting role for Morris to take on after more directly addressing racial issues and stereotypes for the Hulu comedy series Woke, even if the thrust of Saturday Night’s mostly real-time structure doesn’t dig very far into what the big picture scenario was like for Garrett Morris at that time in his career. But as far as being the only Black co-star in a sea of white comedians, the younger actor was asked if he could relate to that imbalance. As he put it:
A little bit. I have a very similar walk in my career. I was always called, 'the Black dude from that show.' For a long time, people didn’t know my name. They just knew, 'you’re the Black dude.' So I identified with that for sure. But when we were on set, there were definitely moments where you feel it.
Within the context of both Jason Reitman's scripted movie and the reality of Saturday Night LIve's earliest days of production, Garrett Morris doesn't come across as a lone-wolf so much as a cautious spectator, feeling out what his fellow colleagues are like before fully stepping into the fray. Which was sometimes the best way for Black actors to approach a project like this, where it would feasibly be easy for him to make quick enemies out of ego-driven talents like Chevy Chase.
In blocking scenes for Saturday Night, which utilizes a large number of one-shot sequences, Morris says Reitman made sure the on-set dynamics matched the real-world narrative, with Lamorne Morris' character not taking part in constant socializing with the larger groups of actors. Here's how he explained it:
Jason, the guy’s a master at what he does. He knew what Garrett was going through, so he didn’t want the audience to look around and go, ‘There’s a lot of Black people there. What is Garrett complaining about?' Because that is the gripe. That was his thing. People weren’t given opportunities like that. So, Jason, he would do these things where he would isolate Garrett, where the big group is over here, and he would say, 'Garrett wouldn’t fraternize in these types of moments,' and I would be over there doing my thing and kind of outward looking in until I got to really know the rest of the cast. He really took his time kind of etching out the minutiae of what these people were going through.
Within Saturday Night, the only other core Black characters are part of the SNL band, as fronted by Billy Preston, portrayed by former Late Show with Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste. But that's a whole different vibe than the comedy scene.
When it came to getting advice from the legend himself, the Saturday Night actor says that Garrett Morris only had one major piece of request-esque advice, which was to not let the movie make it seem like he’d “quit” or allowed the behind-the-scenes static to push him out the door. He remained part of the SNL cast for its first five seasons, dealing with all the adversity that came during those years, and didn’t want the movie to tarnish that badge of honor.
Thankfully, even while in the midst of preparing for the impending release of Saturday Night, Morris earned the biggest recognition for his talents yet, as he took home the Primetime Emmy for his role in the latest season of Fargo, and you can bet his former co-stars congratulated him. Though I think many would agree his daughter’s reaction to the win is a more amusing watch.
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