‘Tis the season for star-studded awards season convos, and Saturday night delivered as Adam Sandler and Timothée Chalamet met up at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles to talk both movies and ball.
Seated on the school’s basketball courts and brought in through a tunnel of USC cheerleaders, Chalamet and Sandler discussed first meeting on 2014’s Men, Women & Children, which the Dune star’s scenes were cut out of.
“I was at the [premiere] party at the Toronto Film Festival and I was sitting there and I was bummed, and you were leaving the party and you gave me a nice little shoulder pat; man, it meant a lot,” Chalamet told Sandler, then recalling how the two reconnected around the time of Uncut Gems.
“When we were doing the circuit, walking around talking about Uncut Gems, you did a speech one night about Uncut Gems and you had, like, the greatest speech of the night, just pumping it up,” Sandler noted. “I remember seeing [director] Josh [Safdie] watching you say that speech going, ‘Fuck, I’m doing a movie with that guy.’” Chalamet admitted, “That’s what I was doing man, I was kissing the ring. I was trailing the Uncut Gems crew so much that Idina Menzel, the great Adele Dazeem, said to Josh, ‘Is he in the movie?’”
Throughout the conversation — put on by Vanity Fair and centered around Chalamet’s work in Safdie’s Marty Supreme and Sandler’s performance in Jay Kelly — the two reflected on their careers through a series of film clips while also bonding over their love of basketball.
“The times we’ve played basketball, we haven’t had great luck. We played these random kids and that was rough,” Chalamet remembered, as Sandler added, “You’re very good, awesome. I’m fine. We played these two kids, just out of nowhere they just so happened to be so fucking good.” (Soon after, one turned up as Sandler’s waiter on a night out).
The pair discussed moments on Saturday Night Live, as well as Chalamet shooting Call Me By Your Name, Dune (revealing he just wrapped the third film four days ago) and A Complete Unknown; for Sandler, the Punch-Drunk Love segment was a highlight, as Chalamet gushed, “To actors across all ages but really my generation, it’s one of the most important performances — impactful, deeply moving. I think because you’ve ascended to such commercial heights that the people that aren’t really in the know don’t understand how impactful that performance was and how incredibly nuanced and deeply lived in and heartbreaking it is.”
The younger star continued, “Hopefully Jay Kelly, it should have been Uncut Gems — I know it’s not about awards but you should have a golden man in your hand because you’re one of the best fucking actors.”
Speaking of Jay Kelly, Sandler brought it back to basketball while noting he used to play with co-star George Clooney, as Chalamet responded, “No way, he balls?”
“He’s great. We played ball when he hosted SNL. He took the whole cast, I think he rented out a YMCA,” Sandler replied. “[Chris] Farley and me and a bunch of goofy comedians, we all went and played ball with Clooney and he was fantastic.”
Chalamet asked Sandler how he keeps his comedic edge with such a stable personal life, as Sandler turned the “how do you do it?” question back on him after seeing what he deals with in public. “You have it worse than me because you’ve got so many fucking photographers following you and shit, which makes life nuts,” Sandler said, as Chalamet joked that was only when the pair were playing basketball and he called the paparazzi to come to capture the moment.
Getting around to Marty Supreme, Chalamet said of his latest project that Safdie “empowered me to be something I would almost be wary of being in this world and this day and age, which is to be openly aspirational and want to live out your dreams to huge heights… I feel like the gift of my life is to focus on this acting thing the way [his character] Marty Mauser is locked in on ping pong.” And to bring things full circle, the two stars closed out the night with a surprise two-on-two basketball game against a pair of fans (which Chalamet and Sandler unfortunately lost).
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