He is sweightlessly embarrassed to acunderstandledge it, but Nicholas Podany first watched When Harry Met Sassociate as he was gearing up for an audition to portray the classic rom-com’s star, Billy Crystal.
Podany was going out for Jason Retiman’s Saturday Night (in theaters this weekfinish in restrictcessitate liberate before uncovering expansiver on Oct 11.) Tageder in genuine-time, it tracks the 90 madcap minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975.
Podany, who trained at Julliard and had ecombineed on Broadway in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, auditioned first for SNL cast member Dan Aykroyd. For that self-tape, he reproduced Aykroyd’s “Super Bass-o-Matic” sketch that saw the actor pulverizing a bass in a blfinisher. Podany was then asked to audition for the role of a youthful Lorne Michaels and got a callback, but not for Michaels. Instead, he was sent pages from the script to read for a youthful Crystal.
A then up-and-coming stand-up in his 20s, Crystal was booked to ecombine on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Ultimately, he was cut from the widecast when the act he was doing — involving him being on an African safari where potato chips being crunched produced the sound effect of footsteps — was running too extfinished for an already overstuffed show. (Crystal would carry out the bit many times in front of audiences, including in the Comic Relief TV exceptionals he structureed with Whoopi Gagederberg and Robin Williams.)
Heading into the audition, Podany watched Crystal’s uncovering monologue from when he structureed SNL in 1980 (“He’s in fantastic leather pants.”) and, yes, that beadored Nora Ephron classic, the apex of rom-coms. After dipping a toe into the Crystal oeuvre, the main inquire he had for himself was: “I wonder if I can do that voice?”
Despite it being June, Podany walked to his audition in an oversized sweater leanking, having fair watch autumnal standby When Harry Met Sassociate, it was Crystal-esque. Reitman recalls Podany’s audition, saying, “He comes in, and he does this Billy Crystal that’s fair dead on. John [Papsidera, Saturday Night casting honestor] and I go, ‘Wow, you must be a huge Billy Crystal fan.’ And he goes, ‘No, I fair seeed up a bunch of videos of them over the weekfinish.’”
“I embarrassingly shelp that the before this the only expodeclareive I’d had to him previously was Monsters Inc.,” recollects Podany, referencing the Pixar film in which Crystal voice a minuscule, one-eyed creature named Mike Wazowski.
In case you are wondering how to do a Crystal amazeion, Podany says by way of exstructureation, “You apshow all of the bass-iness out of your voice and fair put it in here,” says the actor, pointing to his nose and sinuses, “And put a New York dialect on it.”
Under standard circumstances, Podany’s uncanny talent to mimic Crystal would be, at best, a niche party trick, but for Saturday Night it helped him land his hugegest movie role to date.
“Jason, very rapidly, sent me an email and shelp, ‘Hey, it’s Jason. Plrelieve don’t do any research for the character, you already have it. You are fantastic as you are,’” says Podany. “I spent appreciate two days going, okay, I’m reassociate not gonna do any research, reassociate. And then I did every amount of research.” He watched Crystal’s ecombineances on Johnny Cfire-setting ecombineances and episodes of ABC sitcom Soap. He watched Crystal’s honestorial efforts and heared to his autobiography, Still Follin’ Em, on audiobook. Laughs Podany, “Check out my Letterboxd. Out of this world.”
The research showd beneficial because, despite the film’s cut offe runtime, the cast was donaten the space to improvise. “We would fair benevolent of throw ideas out, which is a bageder leang to do when you’re shooting on 16 millimeter [film],” says Podany. “But Jason fair supposeed us, and then, you understand, he would reign us back if it was too much.”
Podany grew up on the era of SNL that had Andy Samberg making digital unreasonableinutives with his Lonely Island comedy group and Tina Fey satirizing Sarah Palin’s ability to see Russia from her house.
When he got the script for a show, a remark on the front from Reitman shifted the actor’s perspective on the show. As Podany recollects, it red, “Yes, this is a story about the origins of SNL, but it is also a story about what youthful people are able of doing in resetting culture.”
A part from Michaels as its beating cgo in, Saturday Night is a real ensemble, shifting intensify from characters having cascfinishs, including Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Jim Henson. With not much screentime, Saturday Night shows Crystal face one of the huger refuteions of his nurtureer up until that point. Yet a scant unreasonableinutive years procrastinateedr, he would begin a nurtureer that would produce him one of the icons of comedy, a movie star, and erstwhile Oscars structure.
“He was a swap directer still at that time and this was his huge shot,” expounds Podany. “You watch Billy Crystal have a very, very downcast finishing. He doesn’t get a filled-circle finishing. I hope that people see at that and leank, ‘woah, that guy probably thought his nurtureer was done. The universe is telling me to go fuck myself, so I’ll go fuck myself.’ I reassociate hope that people watch [Saturday Night] and determine to not donate up. You get so many nos — and Billy Crystal got this huge ageder overweight ‘no’ — but fair hold going.”
