Kathy Bates Had Never Heard of Adam Sandler When She Threw Away the Script for ‘The Waterboy’

Apparently, Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song” isn’t as ubiquitous as we thought.

Kathy Bates, who played Mama Boucher in The Waterboy, had never heard of the song — or Sandler — when she first received the script for the film. “Did you get The Waterboy right out of the gate?” Drew Barrymore asked Bates on her show this week.

“I actually read the first 12 pages and threw it in the trash right next to my bed,” Bates confessed. But the script didn’t stay in the garbage for long. Her niece Linda, who’s worked with Bates since 1994, rescued the screenplay soon after and asked why she threw it out. “Oh, it’s some football script, I don’t know what it is.”  

Linda read the name on the front of the script. “Adam Sandler! You don’t know ‘The Chanukah Song’?”

Bates confessed she’d heard of neither, but Linda set her straight. “She said, You have to do this, you have to do this!” And that’s all the Oscar winner needed to hear to accept the job. 

Sandler and co-writer Tim Herlihy were convinced Bates was an incredible long shot. “It was like disbelief, you know?” Herlihy once told SB Nation. “You expect to get your third and fourth choice. You don’t expect to get Kathy Bates.”

“We had so much fun,” she told Ripa. “I have to say it’s one of my favorite all-time experiences.” 

Sounds like all of the supporting players in The Waterboy came together haphazardly. Henry Winkler, who played Coach Klein, told Kelly Ripa this week that he wasn’t cast until the very last moment. Sandler “called me up in the middle of the night. He said, ‘Henry, I need a favor. My actor didn’t show up. I need you to drive right now to the park,’” Winkler told her. “It’s in L.A., it is now 11:30 at night. I go, and I say, ’Okay.’ I shave. I drive. I go. I sit. I get makeup until 3:30 in the morning.”

Winkler told Ripa that he heard Sandler bought Maseratis for all of his Grown Ups pals after filming. “Do you know what I got? A cookie,” he jokingly complained. “I didn’t even get to keep my wardrobe.” 

That might be true but how many of the Grown Ups stars did Sandler include in “The Chanukah Song”? 

Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli 
Bowser from Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzarelli

A sports car will eventually rust, but “The Chanukah Song” will last forever.