Kym Whitley happily joins the Adam Sandler universe with ‘Happy Gilmore 2'
Veteran actress and stand-up comic Kym Whitley ('Next Friday,' 'Along Came Polly') got to join in on the fun and visited Atlanta recently to promote the movie for Netflix. Whitley has been in the comedy world for more than 30 years. In this film, she plays Bessie, part of Happy's alcohol recovery group led by the sadistic Hal (Ben Stiller), who was a nutty orderly in the first movie. 'I sometimes found myself watching the scene instead of being in the scene,' Whitley said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the Waldorf Astoria in Buckhead. 'Ben is crazy. Adam is crazy. It's hard to keep a straight face. Sometimes I kept my head down and held it.'
At the same time, she added, 'my goal was to make Adam laugh in a scene. But he's a tough one to break. He's able to stay in character.' The set itself was relaxed because Sandler ensured everyone felt included, she said. 'You could always go up to director (Kyle Newacheck) or Adam and say, 'I thought of something. What if we do this?'' Whitley said. 'They make it a fun job. You never feel restrictive as a creative.'
'Happy Gilmore 2' in a pre-streaming world would have landed in movie theaters, but Sandler has forged a strong partnership with Netflix for more than a decade, releasing about a dozen movies on the platform. In this case, Netflix gave him a generous budget to ensure the sequel was packed with visual oomph and ridiculous star power. Two key players, of course, are back from the first film: Julie Bowen as Happy's loving wife and Christopher McDonald as Happy's bitter rival Shooter McGavin.
According to Netflix, 30 past and current pro golfers appear as themselves, led by John Daly, who is living with Happy and gets plenty of airtime. Others include Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson and Jack Nicklaus.
'Jack Nicklaus is still around?' Whitley asked. (He's 85 and gets a couple of lines.) Lavell Crawford, a friend of Whitley's, plays the son of Chubbs, Happy's original mentor (Chubbs was played by actor Carl Weathers, who died in 2024). NFL star Travis Kelce is a waiter. Rapper Bad Bunny becomes Happy's caddie. Others who have notable roles include Steve Buscemi, Haley Joel Osment, Eric André, Kevin Nealon, Post Malone, Eminem and Rob Schneider. Whitley has steadily found work going back to the 1990s. She has 138 acting gigs listed on her IMDb page, including appearances in 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' 'The Neighborhood,' 'Fuller House' and 'Black Dynamite,' as well as Atlanta-based productions like BET's 'Let's Stay Together' and Bounce TV's 'Act Your Age.'
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Gulf Today
a day ago
- Gulf Today
Kym Whitley happily joins the Adam Sandler universe with ‘Happy Gilmore 2'
There's the vaunted Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's the Star Wars Universe. And then there's the Adam Sandler Universe. It doesn't involve as many capes or existential threats, but Sandler expects actors who join him to bring the funny and bring it hard. And 'Happy Gilmore 2,' the sequel to his beloved 1996 film, is a comical cornucopia of original cast members, cameos and big-name stars. It's now streaming on Netflix. Veteran actress and stand-up comic Kym Whitley ('Next Friday,' 'Along Came Polly') got to join in on the fun and visited Atlanta recently to promote the movie for Netflix. Whitley has been in the comedy world for more than 30 years. In this film, she plays Bessie, part of Happy's alcohol recovery group led by the sadistic Hal (Ben Stiller), who was a nutty orderly in the first movie. 'I sometimes found myself watching the scene instead of being in the scene,' Whitley said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the Waldorf Astoria in Buckhead. 'Ben is crazy. Adam is crazy. It's hard to keep a straight face. Sometimes I kept my head down and held it.' At the same time, she added, 'my goal was to make Adam laugh in a scene. But he's a tough one to break. He's able to stay in character.' The set itself was relaxed because Sandler ensured everyone felt included, she said. 'You could always go up to director (Kyle Newacheck) or Adam and say, 'I thought of something. What if we do this?'' Whitley said. 'They make it a fun job. You never feel restrictive as a creative.' 'Happy Gilmore 2' in a pre-streaming world would have landed in movie theaters, but Sandler has forged a strong partnership with Netflix for more than a decade, releasing about a dozen movies on the platform. In this case, Netflix gave him a generous budget to ensure the sequel was packed with visual oomph and ridiculous star power. Two key players, of course, are back from the first film: Julie Bowen as Happy's loving wife and Christopher McDonald as Happy's bitter rival Shooter McGavin. According to Netflix, 30 past and current pro golfers appear as themselves, led by John Daly, who is living with Happy and gets plenty of airtime. Others include Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Bubba Watson and Jack Nicklaus. 'Jack Nicklaus is still around?' Whitley asked. (He's 85 and gets a couple of lines.) Lavell Crawford, a friend of Whitley's, plays the son of Chubbs, Happy's original mentor (Chubbs was played by actor Carl Weathers, who died in 2024). NFL star Travis Kelce is a waiter. Rapper Bad Bunny becomes Happy's caddie. Others who have notable roles include Steve Buscemi, Haley Joel Osment, Eric André, Kevin Nealon, Post Malone, Eminem and Rob Schneider. Whitley has steadily found work going back to the 1990s. She has 138 acting gigs listed on her IMDb page, including appearances in 'Curb Your Enthusiasm,' 'The Neighborhood,' 'Fuller House' and 'Black Dynamite,' as well as Atlanta-based productions like BET's 'Let's Stay Together' and Bounce TV's 'Act Your Age.' Tribune News Service
FACT
3 days ago
- FACT
Everything we know about the first-ever Riyadh Comedy Festival
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The National
4 days ago
- The National
How The Fantastic Four: First Steps harnesses 1960s optimism for a 'divided era'
As an actor, it can be hard to ground yourself in a world that's larger than life. Even more so if the character that you're playing is quite literally larger than life, too. 'How do I pull out a truthful performance when I'm a 14 billion-year-old cosmic vampire who's 750ft tall?' British actor Ralph Ineson wonders to The National. Ineson plays Galactus, the villain of Marvel's latest film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. He, along with the Fantastic Four themselves, have been pillars of Marvel storytelling since the 1960s, but this marks their debut in the shared storytelling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it isn't the first time we've seen the Fantastic Four and company on the big screen. Discounting the unreleased 1990s film adaptation, this is the fourth go-around, with each previous iteration failing to impress fans – probably partly because they strayed too far from the source material. First Steps takes key lessons from those missteps. Most importantly, it embraces almost everything about the original 1960s comic books – right down to the tone, '60s setting and even the goofiness of having a 750ft-tall cosmic vampire appearing on screen. 'We realised that you really have to embrace the weirdness of it all,' Vanessa Kirby, who plays Fantastic Four member Sue Storm, says. To play that with truth and sincerity, each of the lead actors took a different approach. Ineson concentrated on size. 'I would try to go to places where I could look down and have the perspective of a giant. And I'd focus a lot on my breath,' he explains. 'I'm lucky that I have a voice that vibrates through my body more than most people, so I would stand on top of a building, just breathing. 'He's a cosmic force – trying to put human emotions into him is just pointless. So I had to convince myself I was 750ft tall. You get to truth in the strangest ways, sometimes.' Pedro Pascal, who plays Fantastic Four member Reed Richards, thinks Ineson's voice may have been the key to the entire thing. 'Every time Ralph speaks, my body has a reaction,' Pascal says. For the Fantastic Four themselves – Pascal as Reed, Kirby as Sue, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm – the most important aspect to understanding their characters and their world was taking themselves back to the space-age optimism of the 1960s. Moss-Bachrach says: 'We watched a lot of footage of Apollo missions. And we also saw a lot of documentary footage from the '60s to place it, to contextualise it and get a hold of the perspective. 'We've come so far from that spirit of optimism and the great space race. And it was helpful to get a window into these missions that would embody the hopes and dreams and capture an entire nation. 'We're such a divided place these days. So I think those Apollo things in particular were very helpful to understanding how things once were.' To harness that optimism, director Matt Shakman studied the 1964 World's Fair in New York. 'They had a monorail and saucer-shaped buildings. I thought, this is what the people of the 1960s dreamt of what the future would look like, so let's make all of our New York look like this,' says Shakman. Pascal, meanwhile, first and foremost focused not on the setting, but on character. Reed Richards, after all, is not just a superhero, he's also the smartest man in the world. What weaknesses would such a man have? 'At his core, my authorship of Reed is that he's incredibly co-dependent. Without his family, he doesn't know how to function. He's lost to his own brain. His identity is related utterly to his family and his position in the family, and protecting them, and being protected by them,' Pascal explains. Julia Garner, who plays the cosmically powerful Shalla-Bal – the Silver Surfer and herald of Galactus – also had to focus on her character's weaknesses first and foremost. 'She's got quite a tragic back story,' says Garner. 'I had to focus on the loss in her life, really feeling it, and then focus on suppressing that loss because she had a job to do.' Making it all click, of course, was just a matter of chemistry – and that's not something that you can ever produce consciously, according to Moss-Bachrach. 'There's no boot camp for pheromones. Thankfully, in this case, we really got along like a house on fire,' he says. Quinn, on the other hand, found playing Johnny Storm a lot like playing himself. 'I had to balance his bravado with his comedic instinct and intelligence,' says Quinn. 'I have to do this a lot in my personal life – I'm always spinning those three big plates, and you never know which plate you're going to drop.' But dropping a plate, in director Shakman's view, is a feature, not a bug. 'These people have so much messiness, and that's what makes them so relatable.'
