Thirty years after Adam Sandler first hockey-sticked his way through the PGA Tour, Happy Gilmore 2 shows up on Netflix with a new generation of Gilmores—and somehow it works. A lot of that rests on the backs of Connor Sherry, Ethan Cutkosky, Maxwell Jacob Friedman (better known to wrestling fans as MJF), and newcomer Philip Fine Schneider. They’re Sandler’s fictional sons, but on set they sounded more like a boy band trying to keep up with their very loud, very weird dad.
“I believe that everyone has Happy Gilmore within them,” one of them declared. “You just gotta find that sliver of your soul.” Which, sure. But it helps when you’ve got four kids all channeling different parts of Sandler’s deranged swing. “It was almost like we were the four Happy Gilmore dwarfs,” MJF laughed.
Friedman was the outlier—known for cocky mic work and headlocks, not movie scripts—but he insisted this was less of a stretch than it looked. “A lot of people don’t know this about me—I’m a classically trained actor. I did theater from the time I was six to 18. Then I jumped headfirst into wrestling, driving to Indiana to get punched in the face in front of 20 people with 20 teeth combined.” Compared to that, Netflix craft services must feel like the Ritz. “It literally felt like Sleepaway Camp, but also incredibly professional,” he said.
Schneider, the rookie, was fresh off playing Hamlet in college. Now he’s answering to the name “Bobby Gilmore” in a Sandler comedy. “Honestly, the process was really quite similar,” he laughed. “The language was really quite similar as well.”
The older hands, Sherry and Cutkosky, are already producing and directing on the side, so they came at this as both actors and future bosses. “You’re a fly on the wall,” Ethan said. “You get to see how Adam’s putting it together, how Kyle [Newacheck] runs his set. His sets are fun. Good music, good food, least complaining set I’ve ever been on.”
And then there’s the part where the four grown men kept calling Sandler “Daddy.” At first, a script note. Then it stuck. “It just kind of rolled off,” one said. “It just felt right.” They leaned into it, cartoon accents and all, until someone on set finally had to ask, “Did he just call him Daddy?”
Yes, he did. And if that’s the weirdest thing in a Happy Gilmore sequel, then Newacheck and the boys actually pulled it off.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
