Earlier this year, Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night chronicled the story of what happened in the last hour and a half before the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired on NBC nearly five decades ago. There aren’t too many original cast members left who were there, but Chevy Chase is one of them. And when Chase saw the film, he didn’t hold back when he shared his reaction with Reitman.
“Chevy comes in to watch the movie, and he is there with [his wife] Jayni, and they watch the film,” recalled Reitman while appearing on David Spade and Dana Carvey’s Fly on the Wall podcast. “And he comes up to me after, and he pats me on the shoulder and goes, ‘Well, you should be embarrassed.’”
“I’m trying to balance it because, in my head, I know, ‘Alright, I’m getting my own Chevy Chase moment that’s 1,000 percent only for me right now,’” added Reitman. “And from a comedy point of view, that’s really pure, and that’s kind of cool. But also, I just spent like two years of my life recreating this moment and trying to capture Chevy perfectly, and also even in the ego, find the humanity and give him a moment to be loved … He’s not talking about that stuff.”
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However, both Carvey and Spade thought that Chase’s response was very funny.
“You couldn’t even write it better,” quipped Spade before Carvey noted that “[Chase] knows that’s funny, like that’s the roughest thing you could say to a director in the moment, or right up there.”
Chase was the first SNL cast member to leave the series, and he largely focused on films in the decades that followed. The actor was also an original cast member on NBC’s Community, but he’s not expected to return for the movie. Some of Chase’s most recent roles include Zombie Town, The Christmas Letter, and the animated film Panda vs. Aliens.