Spaceman’s director saw himself in Adam Sandler: He’s ‘handsome like a motherfucker’

07.03.2024 - 19:17 / polygon.com / Adam Sandler

Watching Netflix’s cosmic philosophy movie Spaceman, the most obvious question is about the plot: Is that giant alien space spider real, or a hallucination? But the second most obvious question might be Why is Adam Sandler starring in this movie? Sandler has taken on a number of increasingly high-profile dramatic roles since he first surprised his fans and dodged his comedy-career typecasting with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love back in 2002. But his roles have always been tinged with comedy, even if it’s dark, wry, or despairing comedy. Spaceman is something new: a grim story that doesn’t crack a smile as it sends Sandler into space as Czech astronaut Jakub, a man whose life, relationship, and maybe psyche are all disintegrating during a long solo journey.

So why did director Johan Renck see Sandler in the role? “There’s two answers to that,” he told Polygon ahead of the movie’s release. “One is that I had a general meeting with Adam in Los Angeles a few years ago, and we started talking about various things, as one does. This film came up — he had heard about it and was curious about it. And when I told him about it, he said, ‘I want to do that. That’s me, this vain, sort of narcissist guy who’s chasing his own dreams and ambitions and forgetting about the people who are important to him. That’s something I’ve gone through multiple times. So yes, let’s do it.’”

Sandler seeing himself in the role was a bonus, but Renck beat him to it: For him, Spaceman is openly a reflection on his own failings, which is the second reason he cast Sandler. “For me, making a movie which is quintessentially a self-biography — this is about me, very much,” he says. “If I was to be asked, ‘If somebody’s gonna make a movie about your life, who’s gonna play you?’ the answer would be Adam Sandler. He’s the perfect guy to play me. So it was pretty straightforward.”

Why cast Sandler as a metaphorical version of himself? “You know, he’s handsome as hell,” Renck says. “Of course you want somebody playing you to be handsome like a motherfucker.”

But the more serious answer is that Renck has admired Sandler’s work in the past, and has identified with his characters in other movies. Sandler has often returned to a roughly similar kind of figure — the details vary, but his movie characters in dramas and comedies alike often struggle with arrogance and ego, with the difficulty of connecting to other people, and with temperaments that push other people away. They also frequently have difficulties when they’re trying to let their guards down and let other people get close to them.

“I think the same kind of insecurities that he’s so good at performing are something I’ve inhabited inside of me,” Renck says. “I always feel like