Billy Madison remains one of the most popular Adam Sandler movies of all time, nearly 30 years after its release. Starring Sandler as the titular character, Billy Madison tells the story of a spoiled hotel heir who is tasked with retaking and passing every grade in school within 24 weeks if he wants to inherit his father’s business and fortune.
Naturally, the premise of this comedy movie led to a number of humorous scenes with a grown man being schooled alongside a bunch of first-graders, but in a new appearance on Conan, Sandler shared the awkward story behind the ‘90s movie‘s iconic dodgeball scene.
“It was our first movie that we were doing, and we had some control of what we wrote,” Sandler explained. “In that movie, Billy Madison, is the dodgeball scene. I’m hitting all these first graders really hard with a dodgeball, and so we go to shoot it — and this is like 20 years ago guys, so I’m just guessing this is correct — but I hit some kid pretty hard and he gets upset, and he starts crying and then parents all come up to me like, ‘What’s the deal?'”
He continued, “I say, ‘What do you mean, what happened?’ and they’re like, ‘The kid, you nailed that kid’ as I go, ‘No no no that’s the scene, I’m supposed to have like a big guy who went back to school, I’m supposed to plug all these kids, it’s part of the joke’ and they were like, ‘No no no what are you talking about? And I said, ‘Didn’t they read the script?’ and they [the parents] said, ‘They’re six!’ Anyways, I said ‘All right, I won’t do it’ or something and I think I told the guys to roll anyways and I nailed a bunch of kids something awful.”
If you want to see more slapstick scenes, check out our guide to some of the best comedy series.