Garrett Morris, saturday night live (saturday night live), the first black actor to appear on the show from 1975 to 1980, is best known for playing the fictional Dominican baseball player Chico Escuela. However, he played Stan Winters in the first three seasons of Martin Lawrence’s 90s sitcom of the same name Martin This impressed Lamorne Morris, who plays Garrett in “Garrett” saturday nightThe story behind the premiere episode of this NBC sketch comedy directed by Jason Reitman will open in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto on September 27 and in theaters worldwide on October 11.
“Whenever you see someone on TV, if you’re an up-and-coming actor, it seems like an impossible task,” Morris said hollywood reporter. “Martin, in particular, is a master of character. Every actor on this show has the ability to play multiple characters. They are so funny and so effortless, and it reflects the way my friends and I talk to each other. I Just thinking, ‘Okay, damn, we can do this, let’s give it a try.
Morris added: “As you move forward in the comedy ranks, you start to realize more and more possibilities.”
The Chicago native’s rise includes a starring role on Fox new girl Running for seven seasons and starring on Hulu wake up before joining the cast Fa Ge He played Soldier Whitfall in season five, a role for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series. Morris, who has two decades of comedy experience and a natural kinship with Garrett, who shares his last name, even though the two are not related, didn’t hesitate when Morris received an email about the show. Attended an audition. saturday night character one morning.
Here he is with THR About his conversations with Garrett Morris, perfecting the Juilliard-trained performer’s unique voice and recreating his infamous “Kill All the White People” saturday night live Bit.
How and when did you come up with the idea for this role?
Oh, okay, I remember I was in Chicago, I was home, and I got the email. I was still in bed and I checked my phone and I immediately jumped out of bed and said, “I’m doing this right now. I can do this. I know Garrett. This is my wheelhouse.” I got up , put the camera in the bedroom. I went into my brother’s room and got an old jacket and a tie. I did my hair in an afro because my hair was growing out at the time. Pretty confident about that because I’ve had Garrett in my head for a long time and we have the same last name and people always ask us if we’re related and I grew up watching that. Martin. So you just know this person. I’m glad I put that tape together. Isn’t it scary? Of course, because I don’t know the guy personally. So I was worried that he was going to say, “This bastard is terrible.” That’s what I thought. I thought to myself, what if he really hates me? If Garrett sent out an email to everyone saying, “This guy is terrible, please don’t hire him again.” You always think of the worst-case scenario before you play a character. You always think the sky will fall. But apparently Garrett really enjoyed the movie.
You presented Garrett with the Hollywood Legacy Award at the ceremony American Black Film Festival (ABFF) was honored earlier this year along with Leslie Jones. Once you got the role, how much time, if any, were you able to spend with him? He shared his franchise experience with you saturday night live?
I spend more time with him via Zoom and phone calls than I do in person. When we were at ABFF, that was the longest time I had ever spent face to face with him. We sat at the table and chatted, over Zoom, and the questions I asked him were pretty much about his relationships with other actors. Because I know the background. The context is that Garrett is the only black person on the show. A lot of writers are racist and the jokes are made in a certain way that he doesn’t necessarily like. So he had a falling out with some writers and stuff like that. I knew that environment was where he lived. But I wonder, with the other actors, who he resonates with, who he hangs out with.
Apparently drugs were a big part of it at the time saturday night live and culture in general. People snorted cocaine at meetings. That’s how they fell back then. So Garrett said, “Man, everybody was having a good time. It was a crazy bunch of kids playing. So once he explained it to me like that, when we started playing, that helped me a lot. Because once We start working and you start to see other people’s energy and what everyone likes to do and then I go to each actor and explain to them what Garrett has to say about the character they’re playing, and that’s how we work together. of.
You, Jon Batiste and the orchestra are the only black actors in the film. Do you think you can feel what Garrett is feeling through this?
A little bit. I’ve had a very similar experience in my career. I was always called “the black guy on that show.” For a long time, people didn’t know my name. All they know is, “You’re black.” So I definitely identify with that. But there were definitely moments when we were on set that you felt that way. Jason, this guy is a master at what he does. He knew what Garrett was going through, so he didn’t want the audience to look around and say, “There are a lot of black people out there. What is Garrett complaining about? Because that’s what complaining is. That’s his thing. People don’t get opportunities like that.” So, Jason, he would do these things, he would isolate Garrett, and the big crowd was here, and he would say, “Garrett is not going to show brotherhood in a moment like this,” and I would be there doing it My thing is, before I really get to know the other actors, I look outward. He really spent a lot of time documenting the details of what these people were going through.
You said you felt like you knew Garrett before the audition, but did you have to spend time perfecting his voice?
Oh, 100%. You know, Garrett has a different voice quality. Garrett is a performer. So he is naturally a bold, great, and legendary being. when you watch Martinyou remember some of the things he would do. When he talked to Martin, he would always puff out his chest, throw his head back, and say, “Ah, Martin.” He was like Sammy Davis sometimes. But in normal life he is a little different. He was much colder. He would smoke cigarettes and you would have these conversations, man, and he would just talk to people, but his voice had a musicality to it, up and down, very sing-song, because the man was a singer. He sang “La Traviata” in Italian. So I got to watch a lot of his interviews and discuss a lot of things.
And then you have to sing too. Talk about the scene where you performed “Kill All White People.”
He drew this sketch in a scene called “The Folly of Death Row.” I worked with a vocal coach named Dave Stroud, and he really helped me try to figure out exactly how Garrett would sound in that skit. We work really hard. Hope it’s on the field. Garrett went through a lot on the show and said that song solidified his place there. He knew “Okay, I can do it. That’s my strength. I’m a performer. Obviously, it works out really well.” Garrett talked about this in an interview, so I won’t spoil anything. . He talked about how the song came about because of an old show from the ’50s where someone told him that the host would go into the audience and ask someone to sing, so he pulled this older white lady out of the crowd. , asked her: “Hey, sing a song. ” So she said, “Okay, I have a song. ” She sang: “I’m gonna get a shotgun and kill every enemy I see.” “Everyone was shocked and they turned off the cameras and immediately went to see the commercial. He said he remembered that and then changed. I think the cool thing about it is that it saturday night live Pushing the envelope and letting America know, “Hey, here are these interesting young people, they don’t have any limits, they’re going to insult you. They’re going to imitate you. If you’re a politician, if you do something, they’re going to make fun of you.
In the film, the actors are introduced in a sequence captured on camera.
Oh, kid(sigh).
How does it feel to get it right?
So we did it twice. It took us two days to resolve this issue. It’s crazy. When I first met Jason, after getting the job, I believe he said he wanted to make the entire movie about one person, full movie. You rehearse for a month and then spend five days shooting the movie every day. I just thought, “Wow, kid, you’re crazy. What are you on, Jason?”laugh) so he didn’t do that, but these singles were intense. These are like five or six minute balls, so if anything goes off the rails, you have to start from the beginning. At one point we fought back and now we’re taking 12, taking 21, taking 23, and we’re betting on whether we’re going to be over 30 or under 30. It was going to be the last take, and then we were right at the end, and a guy was walking and he was supposed to say his lines, and I looked into his eyes and he froze, and then he said, “Oh shit,” and everyone was laughing. Get up because we are so close. It was a very, very stressful day. You have a llama, you have different characters, and this is your first chance to introduce yourself in this movie. It was confusing, but I gave it to Jason. Jason shot the entire movie with a body double before we even got there. So he knew the choreography.
When was the first time you remember seeing Garrett? saturday night livewas it or is it a goal of yours to be on the show?
Yes, saturday night live A big goal for me. I auditioned saturday night liveI didn’t understand, that’s okay. The full circle moment is here. I had a second city background, improv background, sketch comedy, so, always, saturday night live is a goal. The same year I didn’t have a reservation, I got new girl. So I’m very lucky to be on this show. all the best. But I will say that the first time I remember Garrett doing a sketch for the hearing impaired [“News for the Hard of Hearing”] He would scream whatever the person said so that the deaf person could actually hear him. And Chico Escuela, who was going, “Baseball was very, very good to me.” I only remember those sketches in passing. It’s crazy because I didn’t realize I’d seen those sketches until after I got the role. And then I went back and looked at some of his old sketches and said, “Oh, I know this.” “Oh, I know this.” It all started coming back to me.
