Dylan O'Brien doesn't remember if he met Dan Aykroyd before playing him in “Saturday Night”
"It's a trip. I'm still awaiting confirmation on whether or not I did."
If you had the task of casting a Saturday Night Live biopic, Dylan O'Brien probably wouldn't be the first name that comes to mind to play Dan Aykroyd — and O'Brien himself agrees.
The Maze Runner star was thrilled to hear that Jason Reitman was starting production on Saturday Night, the showbiz drama pulling back the curtain on the backstage turmoil leading up to the first-ever SNL broadcast in 1975. He was also disappointed that there wasn't a role that suited him anywhere in the project. "I was like, 'What a great project. I wish there was a part that I fit,'" O'Brien tells Entertainment Weekly, adding that he was asked to audition for Aykroyd. "I just felt like I didn't fit Aykroyd nor Chevy Chase, so I didn't even send the tape in."
O'Brien couldn't envision himself matching Aykroyd's physicality. "I guess I thought that I didn't really resemble him, which isn't a huge deal, but then I was seeing all the casting announcements, and I was like, 'Wait, what the f---? Everybody totally looks like their person,'" he says.
The SAG strike halted pre-production on the movie last summer, and O'Brien's friend Cooper Hoffman, who plays NBC exec Dick Ebersol in the film, repeatedly encouraged the Teen Wolf star to reconsider as they waited for the project to resume. "Cooper was a part of the project all the way, and we're hanging out all the time, and he's constantly updating me," O'Brien recalls. "I think he had initially gone out for John Belushi, but then he got called back in for Ebersol and then got the part. So he's updating me all the time, and I was always just supporting him and stoked to hear about it, and he was always telling me, 'Just f---ing tape.' And I was like, 'No, I just don't think I'm right.' And he was like, 'Just do it.'"
Aykroyd's shoes remained unfilled after the strike lifted in November. "They still hadn't cast it, and so I just said, 'F--- it,'" O'Brien remembers. "I laid it down on the tape, and then I went in for Jason, and that was it. I was sort of stunned that I got it, that they ended up feeling that I was right for it. It was a big lesson to never take myself out of the running for something before someone else can."
In a way, O'Brien's turn as Aykroyd is a fulfillment of a forgotten destiny. "I have this picture somewhere, and it's funny how much I keep forgetting about this through all this press," O'Brien explains. "They're always asking you for things to talk about. I'm always like, 'I don't know!' But I literally did The Blues Brothers for my third-grade talent show, and I have pictures of me and my friend in our little Blues Brothers outfits. I'm like, 'Oh, f---, there's my talk show story.'"
Bizarrely, O'Brien can't say for certain whether or not he's met Aykroyd in person. "My dad's a camera operator," he says. "And when he moved my family to Southern California when I was a kid, I was 12, utterly miserable, I'd just gotten ripped away from my home. And his first job in California after the move was a movie called Christmas with the Kranks, and it stars Tim Allen and Dan Aykroyd. So my mom just sent me a picture the other day of me as a 12-year-old on the set of Christmas with the Kranks, and I remember Dan being there, so I was like, 'Wait, do you remember if I met him?' That would be the funniest answer for people to be like, 'Have you finally met him?' I'm actually like, 'Yo, it turns out I did in 2003.'"
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Conflicting accounts of O'Brien's tween set visit mean he cannot definitively confirm or deny if he's ever seen Aykroyd in the flesh. "We're not sure if I said hi to him because I was only there for an hour, and then we left," he says. "It's a trip. I'm still awaiting confirmation on whether or not I did. My dad seems to think he wasn't working that night. I feel like I remember it being a dinner table scene where he was working. My mom also has a different version of the story, so I don't know. We all basically just have smoked too much weed, clearly, but we're going to find the answer."
O'Brien didn't meet Aykroyd during the Saturday Night process, so his preparation for the role primarily revolved around archival footage of the comedian and stories from people who knew him, like Reitman. "He loves Dan and has spent so much time growing up around him and then working with him as an adult," O'Brien says of the filmmaker, who directed Aykroyd in Ghostbuster: Afterlife after his father Ivan Reitman helmed the original Ghostbusters. "So from the time I went in there to audition, he naturally just has all these stories that he'll just rattle off about Dan that I found to be incredibly informative for me."
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The stories didn't just come from Reitman, though. "I also absorbed a lot from random people," O'Brien says. "I have a friend who goes to the same bar across the street as me. He's like, 'Oh, what have you been up to?' I told him, 'I'm playing Dan Aykroyd right now.' And he's like, 'Get out of here. No way. I went to high school with his daughter. One time, we were all at her house smoking a joint, and he walked in with an owl on his shoulder.' These are the legendary little things that I was hearing that helped me color in who this guy was — just what a trip, a totally on-his-own-journey kind of dude. I really dug that aspect of him. I came away just thinking he was the coolest guy."
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O'Brien says he feels no insecurity from not meeting Aykroyd and instead views his lack of contact as a charming expression of the comedian's offbeat individuality. "He lives his life, doing his own thing," he explains. "I feel like I'm the same way. It gave me the ultimate comfort of knowing that we were similar. I wasn't relying on meeting him, nor was I self-conscious about not meeting him — I didn't take it as rejection."
Still, O'Brien is excited to eventually cross paths with Aykroyd. "I assume I'll meet him at some point, maybe at one of these things as the movie's rolling out," he says. "I can't wait to meet him when I do. It'll just be a fun, cool little interaction. He did so much for me without even realizing it."
Saturday Night is now playing in theaters.
This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.