Before their films were making millions at the box office, Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow were roommates sharing a $900 per month apartment in the Valley. The old friends sat down with Anderson Cooper and CBS’ 60 Minutes Overtime to share memories from their early forays into comedy and why Sandler eventually moved out.
“Back then, life was just doing stand-up or writing jokes. You would sleep until noon every day and kind of stumble out,” Apatow said. “You would have to be at work at 8:30 at night. Work was sometimes 15 minutes.”
Sandler slept on a mattress with no sheets – and occasionally shared it with one of their friends.
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“Adam always had a rental car. He never bought a car for literally 12 years,” Apatow said. As Apatow recalls it, Sandler’s cars would be filled to the brim with trash and McDonalds bags.
But Sandler said they didn’t consider themselves broke.
“It wasn’t broke. We were doing as comedians good enough to get by,” Sandler said. “We could eat at Red Lobster once every month. That was a big night out.”
“That was like, ‘We’re fancy now,’” Apatow added.
But living together wasn't without its drama. They got into tiffs over who was better looking, (Sandler, to Apatow’s dismay, had a reputation for being more handsome) and there were issues with Apatow using Sandler's bathroom.
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When Sandler moved to New York to join Saturday Night Live, he continued to pay rent, because he thought he was going to “get fired” every week and might have to move back to Los Angeles.
“He just left, like he was going to come back, but he just didn’t come back,” Apatow said.
Apatow’s latest film, This is 40 is currently in theaters. Sandler’s Grown Ups 2 is scheduled for a summer 2013 release.
