The Unspoken Truth Of Adam Sandler

With the apparent exceptions of Kenan Thompson, Darrell Hammond, and of course, Lorne Michaels himself, nobody gets to be a «Saturday Night Live» lifer. Every few years, the show has historically done a sort of soft reboot wherein some of the existing veterans depart and make room for a fresh batch of performers to lead «SNL» into its next generation. Some people leave voluntarily, while others are essentially fired. So, which one happened to Adam Sandler?

Well, for years the story was that he and his friend and «SNL» co-star Chris Farley were fired in 1995, leaving only David Spade — who was gone the following year — left from the so-called «Bad Boys of SNL» era. He even sang a song about it when he finally hosted the show for the first time in 2019, repeating several times throughout the tune that he was in fact fired. However, in 2023 he clarified the situation a bit in a discussion with The Hollywood Reporter: «It was kind of like them asking us to quit. There were new people at the network, and apparently they didn’t like me and Chris, so they kind of said goodbye to us in a nice way.» He technically wasn’t fired, but it sounds like he didn’t exactly quit voluntarily, either.