Scarlett Johansson wasn’t on the hunt for a feature film to direct when she was sent “Eleanor the Great,” about a 90-something woman who reminded Johansson of her own sparky grandmother. But Tory Kamen’s script arrived with a cover letter from Oscar nominee June Squibb.

“I was really interested in what, at this stage, June wanted to star in,” she says. “I was compelled to read it because of that.”

What Johansson also learned is that Squibb, star of last year’s acclaimed caper “Thelma” and the voice of Nostalgia in “Inside Out 2,” adds extra gloss to a project and is genre-adaptable. Since “Eleanor,” she’s wrapped shooting on an indie mockumentary called “The Making of Jesus Diabetes,” starring and produced by Bob Odenkirk. (“Bob and I know each other from ‘Nebraska,’” she says. “He asked and I did one scene.”) Currently, she’s in the play “Marjorie Prime,” her first appearance on Broadway since “Waitress” in 2018, when she stepped into the role of Old Joe, previously occupied by Al Roker. (“They made [the character] into a lady for me.”)

Recently, Johansson and Squibb got together via Zoom to discuss lurching process trailers, how Squibb bonded with co-star Erin Kellyman (who plays Nina, Eleanor’s college-age friend), and the trick to playing a character who tells a whopper at a Holocaust survivors’ support group based on her dead best friend’s experience.

What does a first-time director plan for Day One of a wintertime shoot in New York?

Johansson: The first thing we shot was [Eleanor and Nina] arriving at Coney Island. It wasn’t easy. We were outside. It was cold. It was a little hectic, but we figured it out. Then we had to do this thing in a car, and it was just miserable. Nobody wants to shoot a scene being towed in a car. There are all these stops and starts. You get nauseous. I felt terrible about that. But it was good for June and Erin.

Squibb: We had a lot of time that day together and we liked who each other was. It was just easy.

June, you believe in showing up fully prepped, on script. Did you and Scarlett talk a lot about Eleanor?

Squibb: I’m sure we talked over that first two weeks, but I think we started delving when we started shooting. I can’t say this enough, but her being the actress she is? It just helped me tremendously. I felt so relaxed, like she knew what I was doing.

A less charismatic actor might have trouble pulling off this character. Eleanor can be so impertinent, yet the audience still has to like her.

Johansson: The tightrope June walks is that she’s able to be salty, inconsiderate and rude as the Eleanor character, then balance it out with quiet moments where you see the guard slip. You see the vulnerability of [Eleanor]. June plays that so beautifully.

June, in 1953, you converted to Judaism. Scarlett, how important was it to have Eleanor played by a Jewish actress?

Johansson: It was definitely important to me, and it became important to the production too. We had tremendous support from the Jewish community. We brought the script to the Shoah Foundation and they helped us craft [Eleanor’s best friend] Bessie’s survivor story.

(The Tyler Times / For The Times)

Did they also help you find real-life Holocaust survivors — like Sami Steigmann —that you cast as support group members?

Johansson: It was a real group effort. Every time someone joined, it was a huge celebration. We got another one! At the time there were, like, 225,000 [survivors] worldwide. It gets less every year. I think only two of [the survivors in the group] knew each other previously. None of them had ever been on a film set before, and they were so patient with us.

Squibb: We just sort of passed the time of day. Sami, who was sitting next to me, and I chatted. It was all very relaxed. They were having a good time. They were interested in lunch. I remember that.

Johansson: I talked to everyone individually. Quite a lot of them are public speakers and share their stories. It’s amazing. You’re talking to people in their 90s about an experience they had when they were 7. Their stories are so vivid in their minds. Sami told June that sharing the story is part of the healing.

June, for a bat mitzvah scene you memorized a complicated Torah portion. How did it go?

Squibb: It wasn’t easy to learn. I didn’t do it overnight. But we were in a beautiful synagogue, and it was great to stand there and do it. I enjoyed it.

Talk about finding out that it didn’t make the final cut.

Squibb: I think the first thing I asked [Scarlett was], [sounding peeved] “Where did my Torah portion go?” [laughs]

Johannson: It was, like, “What the hell happened?” [laughs, then winces] I really struggled. But every way I cut it, it didn’t work so it just had to go. I was pretty nervous to show it [to June]. I said to Harry, my editor, “She worked so hard on it.”

How about that five-minute standing ovation when “Eleanor” has its world premiere at Cannes?

Squibb: It was just terribly exciting. We hugged each other a lot. And Erin was there, and she was in our hug too. I kept thinking, “We’re not even at a lovely theater in America. My God, this is an international audience here and they’re loving it.” And they did.

‘Marty Supreme’

Directed by Josh Safdie (R)

★★★★

The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie
since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.

“Saturday Night Live” hosts typically make their mark on the show, either by boosting the sketches they’re in with charm and good timing or making a lesser kind of mark by awkwardly revealing why they aren’t right for live sketch comedy.

So what are we supposed to make of British actor Josh O’Connor, who hosted “SNL” for the first time and left almost no impression at all?

O’Connor, known for playing Prince Charles in “The Crown” and for performances in “Challengers” and the new Netflix movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” seemed game enough, but throughout most of the show he had little opportunity to do much more than blend into sketches centered around characters he was not playing.

He played supporting parts including the Tin Man in a revamped “Wizard of Oz” sketch involving the male characters deciding they actually want a “big old thang” instead of their original wishes, a fellow student in a sketch about a 12-year-old college prodigy (Bowen Yang), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Christmas characters piece that was a take on Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” and an awkward brunch attendee.

Only in a few sketches, including a “Dating Game” parody featuring Ashley Padilla as a rowdy 84-year-old contestant; a hospital sketch in which he played a bad intern; and one in which O’Connor and Ben Sherman played sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party did he have lead roles. And they weren’t particularly memorable characters or portrayals. Only when he kissed fellow cast members at the end of sketches (Yang and Sherman) did things seem to liven up.

In fact, it felt more like a spotlight episode for Yang — who played the Wizard; the fast-talking, high-attitude Doctor Please in the hospital sketch; and the 12-year-old college student — and for musical guest Lily Allen. Allen’s scathing performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her new breakup-with-David Harbour album were high drama. The latter song featured a big surprise: Actor Dakota Johnson spoke from behind a scrim as the titular character and then appeared next to Allen when the song ended. Another Allen song, “West End Girl,” was the subject of an entire brunch sketch in which cast members sang about their feelings to the tune of the music. Allen showed up as herself but filling in as a waitress at their table.

It’s hard to say if the material just misfired for O’Connor or if he’s just an awkward fit for “SNL,” but unfortunately what stood out in the episode had little to do with him.

In addition to the sketches, this “SNL” episode included a Christmas-themed “Brad and His Dad” animated short.

Ready for another President Trump-centered cold open? Sorry, you got one anyway. James Austin Johnson once again aced his impression of Trump with a stream-of-consciousness ramble for reporters aboard Air Force One that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla) attributed to exhaustion. “I took an Ambien and an Adderall, let’s see which one wins,” said Trump before inappropriately fixating on Leavitt’s lips and denying that affordability is a problem. “Economy is very strong,” he said, “from the billionaires all the way down to the poor millionaires.” Trump addressed attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying, “We’re doing pirate now, argh,” and promising that attacks would move from the sea to the air, leading to a visual joke of Santa Claus and his reindeer on radar being shot out of the sky.

O’Connor’s monologue focused on two things those unfamiliar with his acting should know about him: that he has a reputation as a “soft boy,” someone who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens like an “average 65-year-old woman.” The other is that he resembles chef Linguini from the Pixar film “Ratatouille,” and though a rumor that he wanted to play the character in a live-action version was unfounded, he would very much like to play that character. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I would kill as Linguini.”

Best sketch of the night: You ate how many nuggets this year?

Even though it’s already well-trod meme material (including an almost identical comic strip’s premise), “SNL” was still able to squeeze some juice from Spotify’s Wrapped, a year-in-review feature that returned for another round earlier in the week. Uber Eats has a year-in-review, too, and you absolutely don’t want your significant other to see what fast food you’ve ordered and whether you’re in the top 1% of nugget eaters. If your Uber Eats age is “52 and Fat,” it may not be knowledge you wish to have. The mock commercial does a great job balancing the shame we feel about the awful foods we eat with the amount of data we could learn about those habits, if only anyone ever wanted to see that.

Also good: These kind male strippers give the best empathy hugs

A bachelorette party at a cozy cabin is interrupted by two hired male strippers, Augie and Remington (Sherman and O’Connor), who ask for consent before entering and are soon removing their cardigans to reveal another layer of cardigan. The men dance to an emo version of “Pony” before revealing that one of them has a Zohran (Mamdani) tattoo on his stomach. They give lap dances, but one of them gets overstimulated and cries. “I was just thinking about the Supreme Court,” he moans. Not the most original sketch idea, but the specific details of the characters and Padilla’s smitten reactions as the bachelorette saved the sketch from overstaying its welcome.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Superheroes, Santa and your boss all want you to behave

Jane Wickline did a nice job with a surprisingly violent original song about stopping the biggest threat facing the world: not AI, but the grown-up child actors from “Stranger Things.” But it was Marcello Hernández who got big laughs recounting what Christmas is like for his Cuban family. It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t. “You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin!” Hernández wandered a bit, straying to talk about “Home Alone” and uncles who give unsolicited sex advice, but the heart of the segment was impressions of his father calling to encourage his son as different characters including Santa Claus, Spider-Man and his boss, Lorne Michaels.