Everything You Need to Know About the Ventriloquist Who Opened for Adam Sandler in His New Netflix Special
The ventriloquist act that opens for Adam Sandler in his new special Love You is working hard to win over the crowd. “How’s he doing?” Sandler asks a world-weary guy operating the theater audio board.
“He’s doing good,” the guy croaks in unconvincing fashion.
A stray dog passes through the worn-down theater halls. Sandler looks to his entourage: “Who booked this place?”
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As Sandler prepares to take the stage, he crosses paths with the ventriloquist and his dummy, wearing a cap with “Lester” bedazzled across the front. “Great audience,” says the puppetmaster.
“They made me feel real,” agrees Lester, the bespectacled puppet.
“Willie and Lester, you guys,” says Sandler. “This means a lot to me. The crowd loves you.”
While Willie Tyler and Lester might be unknowns to younger viewers of Sandler’s special, his admiration for the comic duo is genuine. The veteran ventriloquist act has been around long enough to have played the Chitlin’ Circuit. “These were the places where Black acts could perform for Black crowds,” Tyler says in The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. “B.B. King called them ‘Buckets of Blood,’ because there was always someone fighting.”
Tyler and Lester spent much of the 1960s emceeing Motown shows before becoming a television staple in the 1970s, showing up on programs like Laugh-In, the Dean Martin celebrity roasts and The Jeffersons.
The Laugh-In appearance got him a spot at the Comedy Store, where he was a regular for years. “It was a good place to try new material and watch other acts that were trying stuff out, honing their sets, before their Tonight Show,” he told comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff. “Jay Leno had just moved out here then, and David Letterman became the regular emcee.”
For Sandler’s generation, Tyler and Lester were late-night comedy staples in the 1970s and 1980s, appearing on shows with Letterman and Kimmel into the aughts. Letterman rightly called the act “legendary.”
Sandler gave the duo one other shoutout in Love You when pal Rob Schneider left the stage and plopped himself into an audience member's lap. “Hey,” joked the Sandman. “It’s Willie Tyler and Lester!”
