In the new Saturday Night Live biopic Saturday Night, Lamorne Morris plays Garrett Morris, SNL's first Black cast member who has trouble finding his place on a predominantly white show. As the only Black lead on New Girl for the majority of its run, the actor strongly related to his character's struggles.

"Garrett being a fish out of water, I definitely felt that in my early years," Lamorne Morris tells Entertainment Weekly. "Being in New Girl, I was a new character after the first episode, so a lot of time was spent trying to develop my character and figure out who I was on the fly. And even though it's not personal, sometimes you take it personal, and you're like, 'What the hell, man? I'm the one Black character on this show, and they don't know how to figure out my character. He ain't got no job. Is that the storyline now?'"

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Morris' character Winston Bishop was added to New Girl once it was picked up for a full season, as Damon Wayans Jr., who played Coach in the show's pilot, had to return to Happy Endings and couldn't commit to another sitcom. With hindsight, Morris recognizes that the show's initial inability to find Winston's footing had nothing to do with him. "I had a lot of those thoughts, even though now looking back, it wasn't personal," he says. "It's not easy to develop characters for a television series. And so kudos to the writers for figuring it out and really sticking with me because there were days where I felt like I'm going to get fired."

On projects beyond New Girl, Morris notes that he's felt uncomfortable as the only Black person on the entire set. "A lot of times you work on a project where you are the only Black character, but then you look around, there's also no Black crew members, so sometimes you're like, 'What age are we living in? What is happening over here?'" he says. "I don't know. But damn, there's 100-something people y'all hired, and ain't nobody Black but me!"

He continues, "I don't want to say it's nefarious. But I am saying I notice it because when you tell a Black joke and you look for somebody to be like, 'Yeah, I get it,' but you don't get that. You are like, 'Oh, who am I talking to then? Does anybody live in the hood? Anybody around here understand what I'm talking about? None of y'all got a Black uncle? All right. So that type of stuff, you feel it from time to time, and it is not all the time, but it has happened on a few projects. So I feel like Garrett and I shared a very, very similar walk in that regard."

To prepare for the role, Morris said that he had long conversations with his SNL counterpart — despite Saturday Night director Jason Reitman advising against it. "Jason didn't want us to reach out to the real actors," he says. "His thing was, you're an actor. You already know what to do, do what you need to do to get in shape for this movie. However, I don't want you to do too much because this movie is about these characters in their real life with these high pressure moments. You know what I mean? What's that like? So he wants us to really focus on that. But I called Garrett anyway and had multiple conversations with Garrett. I hung out with Garrett. I presented him an award at the [American Black Film Festival]."

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Morris wanted to verify that Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan depicted Garrett accurately in their screenplay. "A lot of my preparation was making sure Garrett got his message across," he says. "I gave him a little bit of what the script entailed, and he said Jason and Gil did a fantastic job of putting it together. He said, 'Just play it honestly.' And so that's it."

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The actor says that his interactions with the comedian were incredibly informative. "You don't have to ask him anything," he recalls. "He just tells you a million stories, and they're all funny and they're all poignant. A lot of 'em have a lot of deep meaning behind it. This man has lived one hell of a life. He is almost 90. He helped desegregate the unions, his theater troupe was raided by the FBI, he protested for civil rights. And then on his performance side, him being a classically trained performer, went to Juilliard, all these things. He would just tell stories — a lot of stories in which I will not repeat — but he was an encyclopedia for sure. So that definitely helped me get into character, too."

Saturday Night is now playing in theaters.