Chevy Chase was the breakout star of Saturday Night Live‘s first season in 1975, so it’s only fitting that the actor playing him, Cory Michael Smith, delivers one of the most memorable performances in Saturday Night.

Smith, perhaps best known for his turn as the Riddler on Fox’s Gotham and for his frequent collaborations with Todd Haynes, eerily echoes Chase’s voice, mannerisms, and physicality in Jason Reitman‘s new film, which dramatizes the hectic 90 minutes leading up to SNL‘s first broadcast 49 years ago. Entertainment Weekly spoke with Smith about how he became Saturday Night‘s Chevy Chase — and what he hopes to tell the real Chevy Chase one day.

Entertainment Weekly: What was your initial relationship with Chevy and his work prior to starting this process?

Chevy was one of a handful of comedic actors I really loved as a kid, along with certainly Bill Murray and Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy — these mainstay comedic actors that were all goofy but still leading men. I remember imitating all of them in different roles when I was a kid, and there was a real joy and freedom in their work. So it’s very cool to have the responsibility and the privilege of playing Chevy at a really pivotal moment in his life where I get to be a little goofy and silly sometimes, but also try to latch on to the real pathos of this guy in this moment and what it meant to sort of have this confidence and ego going into this changing moment and to have it swatted down by a real champion of television in the art form.

What Chevy Chase projects helped you in your preparation?

The National Lampoon stuff was really my entry to him and where I saw him the most. But for this, I watched the first season of SNL quite a bit and it was really fun to see the change in him from the beginning to the end. You really see a definitive shift in who he is and his confidence and his identity. But his first couple of films were the ones that really I leaned into the most — the first, Foul Play, because he’s wonderful in it, but you can tell after looking at his other body of work that it’s an actor doing his first film. There’s just a freshness to him in that movie that feels different from other stuff.

There’s also an interview that I watched where he said that Fletch was the character which felt closest to who he is in real life, so I latched on to Fletch and watched that a lot. I did feel like something had happened by the time he did Fletch where he really gained a kind of confidence and a real skill at all of these tiny bits and physical tics that are so smooth and clever and fun, and I really wanted to bring that to the role here and there. So I watched that movie a lot.

Were there any elements to his performance style that you found particularly difficult to replicate?

The thing that was really important for me was making sure that his quips were dry. He’s dry and nonchalant. I wanted to make sure that I was capturing that, because I personally can be a little more emphatic than he can. So I was really trying to capture a certain Chevy cadence and snarkiness — without being too glib, because he is charming. So it was surfing that line of being sarcastic and dry without being too dark. I think a lot of what can read as confidence or cockiness comes in the way that he delivers lines, so it was sort of finding the most accurate tone.

What did Jason Reitman tell you about the real Chevy to shape your performance? 

Jason talked to Chevy and Chevy’s daughters, so there was communication from the start. The big question that Jason had for me at the beginning was, “How much insecurity are we going to see from Chevy?” He wanted me to look at how he walked, and also wanted to focus on: “How good of a liar is he?”

For him, it was always calibrating the degree of confidence versus insecurity because the Chevy we know is very confident, but this is before he had the approval of a massive audience. The thing that blows my mind, this doesn’t necessarily happen anymore — SNL premiered Oct. 11, 1975. By December, he was on the cover of New York Magazine.

That’s crazy. I mean, some people shoot to fame, for sure — I guess we’re seeing that happen with Chappell Roan right now, and that’s fascinating to watch — but generally it just doesn’t happen that fast, and it did to him. So very quickly, this person was validated by the general public, but the movie takes place before that. He’s someone that thinks of himself as funny and had a writing job on the Smothers Brothers, so he’s had some validation and some wins, but he’s in his early thirties and he’s still trying to catch a real break. 

So what is the degree of confidence that you can have in yourself and believe in yourself before you actually get the proper validation of a wide audience falling in love with you? That’s where Jason really wanted me to be aware of how much of that confidence is earned and how fragile it is so that when we see him with Milton Berle, we can test: How easily does that break, and how difficult is it for him while he’s experiencing humiliation?

Did you speak with Chevy or with anyone other than Jason who had interacted with him?

Jason was my point person. Jason has known Chevy for a long time and I really trusted Jason’s guidance here. But for me, it was acknowledging that there’s so much material out there of Chevy Chase. My task is to imagine what he was like that night or before he became a star, but also to make this person recognizable to people who know him. So it was a lot of trying to capture the essence of what was so great about this person, and then rewinding a bit. But I really did trust that what I would present to Jason, that he would help me mold and adjust and navigate. And I feel like we did that well together.

I did say to Jason, “I would like to speak to Chevy.” I wanted to speak to him. And Jason said to me what he said to everybody — he was generally discouraging people from talking to their real people. He said, “What do you want to get out of that?”

And I really thought about that. The thing that was the most important to me, that I really wanted to tell him, was that it was an honor to portray him at this really pivotal moment in his life. It was cool and very special for me, and I think it would be great if one day I do get to say that to him in person because it is very special to me. But in hindsight, I think I made the right choice.

What was the most fun or rewarding sequence that you remember shooting?

My favorite day of shooting, because the project is such an ensemble piece, was the day that we shot the screen tests that are used at the top of the film. Everyone came in with their material. Jason said, “You get two takes. In between the takes, stay in character. Everyone else in character may ask whatever question they want, and you have to respond in character.” And that is the moment that everyone gasped and screamed “What?!” 

No one was ready for that moment, and suddenly we were thrust into it. I remember Lamorne Morris went first, I went second, and then everyone else followed. I was so hyped for this because I had spent so much time desperately trying to capture who Chevy would be: what his voice sounded like, the speed and everything. I was like, “Oh, this is so fun.” And at this point I had started doing improv as Chevy and felt really good about it.

But it was so special because my cast was unbelievable. You saw all the work that everybody had put into their characters, and though they panicked initially at having to remain in character and improv based on random questions we all threw at each other, everybody delivered an incredible performance. And it was that day that I felt so excited and confident about what we were making, because we weren’t all working together every day. So we didn’t see everybody’s best performances or their main scenes. We saw a lot of each other, but not like that. And it was just so impressive, and I was so proud to be a part of that group. I think it’s proven true that everybody’s work in the film is strong. I’ve never been a part of a stronger ensemble, collectively.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Saturday Night is now playing in theaters.