December 18th will mark 25 years since the great Chris Farley died in Chicago at the age of 33. To commemorate his passing and celebrate his life, Dana Carvey and David Spade have put out a special edition of their Fly on the Wall podcast interviewing Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, and more about their time on Saturday Night Live with one of the funniest people to ever live.
“No one was competing with Farley,” Rock recalled. “It was just like, he’s Michael Jordan and give him the ball.”
“If he wanted to take the scene, he could take it, if he felt like it,” Carvey said. “And he was a nice guy, so he’d lay back sometimes. But if he wanted to go to a move that no one else has? That energy that he could explode with.”
“Yeah,” Rock agreed. “Literally never had one bit of like, ‘Hey, this guy doesn’t write sketches. Why is he in everything? Hey!’ None of that. None of, ‘Why is he in nine things and I’m in one?’ ‘Cause he’s better than you. That’s why.”
“’Cause he should be in ten,” Spade added, before explaining why he thought Farley was even better than his hero John Belushi. Rock also speculated on what Farley might have gone on to accomplish.
“It’s sad when our friend’s not here, but it is curious to…[think]…‘Wow, what would that guy have done?’” Rock said. “When I see [Adam] Sandler in something like Uncut Gems, it’s like, ‘Yeah, Farley could have done that. Farley could have been in…’ He’s literally that level of actor, and that level of … you just felt for that guy. Okay, whatever ride Chris Farley was going to take me on, I was definitely ready to go on it.”
As for Sandler, he recalled working with Farley on the famous “Lunch Lady” sketch and video. “I think it was a one-day video shoot, and he was a madman,” Sandler remembered. “And then he did it on the show and kicked ass. See, that was the best thing about being in a skit with Farley. You just felt safe. You’re like, ‘Well, he’ll fucking kill.’ Let’s let… whatever, this thing’s going to be just fine. He’ll destroy, and I’ll fucking ride the wave with him. It was like being in the perfect wave. He would set a fucking nice, whatever the fuck it was, he’d set this great pick for you. You’d be able to throw a layup in and go, ‘Hey, I scored!’ But meanwhile he did all the work.”
Spade and Carvey also spoke to Conan O’Brien, Mike Myers, Kevin Nealon, Jon Lovitz, Bo Derek, Jim Belushi, Chris’ brothers Tom and John Farley and their mother Mary Anne Farley, and more. Check out clips from the interviews below, and scroll onwards for parts one and two of the full five-hour podcast.
