Before Paul Thomas Anderson cast him for his 2002 romance “Punch-Drunk Love,” Adam Sandler was mostly known for broad comedies. He was certainly not the most obvious candidate for a lead in a dramatic role, as Anderson’s longtime producer JoAnne Sellar herself admits.
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In the new book “Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterclass” by Adam Nayman, Sellar confesses (via IndieWire) to have doubts about casting Sandler. “After ‘Magnolia’ [Paul] wanted to make a really short movie,” Sellar said. “That was the first thing I remember him saying. But yeah, he wrote it for Sandler. He was a huge Sandler fan, and I was just befuddled. I just didn’t get the whole Adam Sandler thing at that stage. I mean, the ‘Saturday Night Live’ stuff, yes, but the movies that Adam had done weren’t for me. As a British person I didn’t really get the humor. But Paul just kept saying, ‘Oh my God, he’s so great!’ And he completely made me change my mind about Adam.”
Of course, it’s easier to look at this doubt with the hindsight that Sandler was praised for his stellar performance in “Punch-Drunk Love,” which even got him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, but at the time it was a reasonable opinion. Even Sandler himself admitted earlier this year that he was unsure of whether he could pull off the role after he saw “Magnolia.”
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“It was sold out, and I was in the front row, and I was looking up at it, and I was fucking terrified, and I was going, ‘Oh this guy is fucking better than me. I don’t want to be in this. I’m going to ruin his movie! Holy shit!'”