He is slightly embarrassed to admit it, but Nicholas Podany first watched When Harry Met Sally 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 weekend in limited release before opening wider on Oct 11.) Told in real-time, it tracks the 90 madcap minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975.
Podany, who trained at Julliard and had appeared on Broadway in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, auditioned first for SNL cast member Dan Aykroyd. For that self-tape, he recreated Aykroyd’s “Super Bass-o-Matic” sketch that saw the actor pulverizing a bass in a blender. Podany was then asked to audition for the role of a young Lorne Michaels and got a callback, but not for Michaels. Instead, he was sent pages from the script to read for a young Crystal.
A then up-and-coming stand-up in his 20s, Crystal was booked to appear on the first episode of Saturday Night Live. Ultimately, he was cut from the broadcast when the act he was doing — involving him being on an African safari where potato chips being crunched created the sound effect of footsteps — was running too long for an already overstuffed show. (Crystal would perform the bit many times in front of audiences, including in the Comic Relief TV specials he hosted with Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams.)
Heading into the audition, Podany watched Crystal’s opening monologue from when he hosted SNL in 1980 (“He’s in great leather pants.”) and, yes, that beloved Nora Ephron classic, the apex of rom-coms. After dipping a toe into the Crystal oeuvre, the main question 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 thinking, having just watch autumnal standby When Harry Met Sally, it was Crystal-esque. Reitman recalls Podany’s audition, saying, “He comes in, and he does this Billy Crystal that’s just dead on. John [Papsidera, Saturday Night casting director] and I go, ‘Wow, you must be a big Billy Crystal fan.’ And he goes, ‘No, I just looked up a bunch of videos of them over the weekend.’”
“I embarrassingly said that the before this the only exposure I’d had to him previously was Monsters Inc.,” remembers Podany, referencing the Pixar film in which Crystal voice a small, one-eyed creature named Mike Wazowski.
In case you are wondering how to do a Crystal impression, Podany says by way of explanation, “You take all of the bass-iness out of your voice and just put it in here,” says the actor, pointing to his nose and sinuses, “And put a New York dialect on it.”
Under normal 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 biggest movie role to date.
“Jason, very quickly, sent me an email and said, ‘Hey, it’s Jason. Please don’t do any research for the character, you already have it. You are great as you are,’” says Podany. “I spent like two days going, okay, I’m really not gonna do any research, really. And then I did every amount of research.” He watched Crystal’s appearances on Johnny Carson appearances and episodes of ABC sitcom Soap. He watched Crystal’s directorial efforts and listened to his autobiography, Still Follin’ Em, on audiobook. Laughs Podany, “Check out my Letterboxd. Out of this world.”
The research proved helpful because, despite the film’s strict runtime, the cast was given the space to improvise. “We would just kind of throw ideas out, which is a bold thing to do when you’re shooting on 16 millimeter [film],” says Podany. “But Jason just trusted us, and then, you know, he would reign us back if it was too much.”
Podany grew up on the era of SNL that had Andy Samberg making digital shorts 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 note on the front from Reitman shifted the actor’s perspective on the show. As Podany remembers, it red, “Yes, this is a story about the origins of SNL, but it is also a story about what young people are capable of doing in resetting culture.”
A part from Michaels as its beating center, Saturday Night is a true ensemble, shifting focus from characters having crises, including Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Jim Henson. With not much screentime, Saturday Night shows Crystal face one of the larger rejections of his career up until that point. Yet a few short years later, he would start a career that would make him one of the icons of comedy, a movie star, and erstwhile Oscars host.
“He was a substitute teacher still at that time and this was his big shot,” explains Podany. “You watch Billy Crystal have a very, very sad ending. He doesn’t get a full-circle ending. I hope that people look at that and think, ‘woah, that guy probably thought his career was done. The universe is telling me to go fuck myself, so I’ll go fuck myself.’ I really hope that people watch [Saturday Night] and recognize to not give up. You get so many nos — and Billy Crystal got this big old fat ‘no’ — but just keep going.”
