Idina Menzel: Adam Sandler makes me 'proud to be a Jew'
Jewish star Menzel is about to star in Sandler’s upcoming film You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
March 31, 2023 15:43
US actor Adam Sandler and US actress-singer Idina Menzel arrive for the 35th Film Independent Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, California, on February 8, 2020. (Photo by Jean-Baptiste Lacroix / AFP) (Photo by JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX/AFP via Getty Images)
Jewish actor and singer Idina Menzel has paid tribute to comedy legend Adam Sandler, saying he makes her "proud to be a Jew."
In a comedy song at a ceremony for the awarding of a prestigious American comedy prize, Menzel sung a tribute to Sandler, one of America's most recognisable Jewish actors.
Menzel wowed the crowd with a rousing performance in the style of Sandler’s famous SNL weekend correspondent, Opera Man.
Along with some Yiddish, Menzel’s song referenced many Jewish moments, including “Stiller, Apatow, so many Jews-ah,” referring to Sandler’s friends Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow who were in the crowd, finishing the line with, “Kanye switches channel to Fox News-ah.”
Menzel sang about how the actor went “from Stan and Judy’s little beauty,” referring to the actor’s Jewish parents, before belting out that Sandler made her “proud to be a Jew!” with a picture of Sandler and his sister lighting a menorah on screen, whilst Sandler sported a kippah.
The Frozen star’s tribute was not the only musical tribute. Fellow Jew Ben Stiller also went on stage to celebrate his friend and long-time collaborator but ended up mostly kvetching about how the two constantly get compared.
Stiller also complained about Sandler’s “Chanukah Song,” which he said, “my daughter forces us all to listen to after we light the candles every year… it’s that Adam magic.”
He told the crowd, “I bet if a different Jewish comedic actor wrote a way edgier song about, let’s say, Yom Kippur, his representatives would call it embarrassing and beg him not to release it.”
Stiller then started singing a version of Sandler's Chanukah ditty for Yom Kippur: “It’s time to atone / So let’s get in the zone.”
While accepting his award, Sandler forwent the fake Southern accent he usually uses in acceptance speeches and talked about his Jewish family.
He first apologised to his mother, Judy, who was in the crowd. “I’ve been making jokes about my mother for many years but she’s a great lady and I’m sorry if any of them ever hurt your feelings, Mum.”
Sandler said that the secret to his success was his supportive family — his “sweet, beautiful” mum who played him Barbra Streisand and Johnny Mathis while growing up, and his ponytailed father, Stan, who introduced him to Johnny Cash, Johnny Ray and the Marx Brothers.
Sandler also paid tribute to his two daughters and future co-stars, Sadie and Sunny (who also sing Jewish Taylor Swift parodies) saying they give him confidence every year on his birthday when they gift him a “world’s best farter” shirt.
“Thank you for creating a delusional psychotic man,” he later joked.
Menzel is set to star in Sandler’s upcoming You’re So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which is set to arrive on Netflix in early 2023.
