Adam Sandler and pal Timothée Chalamet teamed up for a special event over the weekend.
The friends surprised fans at the end of their Vanity Fair Scene Selection conversation at Los Angeles’ Fairfax High School on Saturday, November 15, when they participated in a pickup basketball game.
The two-on-two matchup saw Sandler, 59, and Chalamet, 29, take on two students from the crowd. The actors tried their best, but ultimately lost 3-1 while fans cheered them on. They greeted their admirers after the event as attendees left the gym where the event took place.
“I’ve played basketball in this gym many times, and I never do good here,” Sandler said earlier in the night, according to The Wrap. “Thirty-five years I’ve been playing ball here, but I just suck in this gym.”
Chalamet also recounted a time when he played basketball at Fairfax as a high schooler. Apparently, he locked himself out of the gym one night and had to hop a fence to get back in.
“It was that scary height of fence where I was, like, ‘Whoa, if I fall, this could be it,’” he joked.
Native New Yorkers Sandler and Chalamet have played basketball together before, and were famously photographed in Soho in July 2023 while participating in a 3-on-3 game.
“I always played a lot of hoop, Chalamet’s a great hooper. He loves playing and we’ve known each other a long time. I’ve known him, maybe, 15 years or something,” Sandler told Complex in July while promoting Happy Gilmore 2. “Timmy brings it. He’s smooth with the ball. He can shoot, can pass nice, dribbles nice. We call each other, we play hoop whenever we can. If I’m in town and he’s in the same town, we get a hold of each other.”
Adam Sandler and Timothee Chalamet play basketball at a special event on November 15, 2025. Courtesy of Netflix
On Saturday, Sandler and Chalamet sat down to discuss their respective film careers as Chalamet promotes Marty Supreme and Sandler vies for some award season love with Jay Kelly.
“I know it’s not about awards, blah, blah, blah. But you should have a golden man in your hand, because you’re one of the best f***ing actors on the planet,” Chalamet told Sandler while praising his performance in 2002’s Punch Drunk Love.
According to Vanity Fair, Sandler told Chalamet that, in 2017, his costar Grace Van Patten raved about him on the set of Noah Baumbach’s film The Meyerowitz Stories.
“She’s like, ‘This kid Timmy is incredible,’” Sandler said. “You both were in high school, and she said, ‘Everyone talks about Timmy.’”
Chalamet has been nominated for two Oscars for Best Actor for his performances in 2017’s Call Me by Your Name and 2024’s A Complete Unknown. Sandler has yet to be nominated for an Oscar, but received critical praise for his work in 2019’s Uncut Gems.
George Clooney and Adam Sandler have teamed up for the enthralling Jay Kelly — a film that fans think could potentially earn Sandler his first-ever Oscar. The trailer for the Noah Baumbach-directed comedy drama dropped on Monday, September 29, with many already predicting Sandler’s name to be thrown into the mix for an Academy Award […]
The film’s codirector Josh Safdie was in attendance at Saturday’s event, as he also helmed Marty Supreme.
“I’d be scared to do some s*** and feel like I couldn’t do it. Or I’d feel foolish, or maybe I don’t want to be seen like that. But I just dove in,” Sandler said.
Chalamet said he had a similar experience working with Safdie, 41.
“Josh gave me this opportunity where I feel empowered to be something I would almost be wary of being in this day and age, which is to be openly aspirational,” Chalamet said. “I feel like the goal of my life is to focus on this acting thing, the way Marty Mauser is locked in on ping pong.”
