When I left SNL, they did a sketch and they did a joke about me and I did not like it.
I was like, oh my God, that body's not even cold yet.
And there's this anecdote about how your mom would like drop you off in the desert and then go to work.
Not just drop in the desert, but give us each a gun.
How's your relationship with Eddie Murphy?
I don't think it's ever going to be great.
Chris Farley, obviously you lost at a very young age.
It's hard to talk about it so casually, but there was no choice but to keep going.
Hi, I'm Michael Sebastian, editor-in-chief of Esquire, and this is what I've learned.
Today I'm joined by a razor-sharp, eternally unbothered actor, podcaster, and stand-up legend.
A guy who's made a career out of saying the thing everybody else is thinking.
Please welcome a legend, David Spade.
You nailed that in one.
I know, right?
Not bad, huh?
You know, I want to start with your style of comedy.
You know, you tell a lot of great jokes, whether you're out on the road, on the stage, whether you're doing your podcast with Dana Carvey.
But one of the hallmarks seems to be this idea of, like, a throwaway joke, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Sort of these in-between moments that really get all the laughs.
When I did my first comedy club.
Try on the amateur night.
You get three minutes, which I thought wasn't long enough, and it's actually eternity.
When you say one joke, it takes 10 seconds, so for three minutes is a long chunk.
But I did it.
Obviously did horribly to kind of burn out.
He looked like you a little bit but he was like had hair back.
He had a cigarette and I go, how was I?
You know, obviously we all knew I was bad.
And I go, can I come back?
And he goes, this shit you said between was funnier than your jokes.
And I was like, what are you talking?
So I went back and listened to my little And I was like oh, I would say a joke and then just comment on it.
That just came more naturally.
And so eventually throughout comedy and the whole time I've been doing it, I kind of lean on that.
When somebody bumps into you, what is the thing that they want to talk to you about or know you for most?
Is it the podcast?
Is it Tommy Boy, SNL, Grown Ups?
I would say that the top ones are Joe Dirt, Tommy Boy Emperor's New Groove is up there, which is a animated movie I've got little kids I've seen yeah, and then it's like sitcom reruns.
You know, of course, rules of engagement.
Just you be less now, and so I do get sort of that on the podcast lately.
So I just like to try to hit different areas wrong missy was a movie for Netflix couple years ago.
And then I got that one the most so You just need something to hit here and there.
A lot of things don't, but you need something to kind of hang on to to get to the next thing and just stay alive.
Even Chris Rock says, Wrong Missy was like number one in the world.
And he goes, Spade, it buys you six months in show business.
That's it.
And I said, it's kind of true.
Then everyone goes, now what?
And you go, fuck.
And if you run into like an Uber driver and he goes, what movies are you doing now?
That's like the first question.
What movies?
I go, oh, I did the wrong message.
I didn't see that.
What else?
First of all, you just said you're my biggest fan in the world.
You don't even know the last movies I've done.
It's obviously a tricky kind of business to stay in the mix, but just if you can tread water and be out there at all, it's fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's go back to the beginning.
You grew up in Arizona.
Your dad moves you from Michigan to Arizona and then kind of promptly splits.
Promptly, yes.
Yeah.
At the end of your memoir, almost interesting though, you say that you love him to death.
And I'm curious what the biggest lesson is that your dad taught you?
One was wrong you don't have to pay child support.
That turned out to be false.
Uh, you know we were four, six and eight when he took off.
The funny thing we were all in michigan and my mom he pulled her out of her last year of college.
She was a writer greatest you know person in my life, very smart and very funny, And I'm lucky to have like funny mom and funny dad.
The funny dad didn't have a ton of else going, but it was just, he was funny.
And that's all you needed.
Like my mom was so gorgeous.
I'm like, how did he go out with you?
She goes, he was fun.
I go, is that all you needed back then?
God damn.
Let's bring those days back.
Anyway, they, four kids, and then he's like, hey, I got a job in Arizona.
Was he mental?
He flies us all to Arizona, and then he's like, funny story, no job, then I'm out of here.
So he took off.
So I go, why are you moving?
I asked him later, why'd you move us all?
Just divorce her where she has all her friends, in Michigan.
Didn't cross his mind.
So now we're just single mom with the kids growing up.
It was very tricky, you know, very tough.
And she doesn't like cry all the time when she had it rough.
You know, she's just like, no, no, no.
She doesn't want us to see that.
She wants us to always be positive.
And she's so upbeat and she's still around.
She's 88.
And she's still so funny and so upbeat.
I just try to copy that.
Yeah.
Sounds like an extraordinary woman.
She is an extraordinary woman.
So anyone that meets her is just like lights up the room.
So I lucky I had that.
The dad was, you know, I had a good couple of good things out of there I extracted.
But overall, he was just kind of a little bit of a flim flam man.
But he had a good sense of humor. but my mom was really where it was at.
Yeah.
So you grew up in Arizona and you know reading your book Almost Interesting.
You really get this kind of sense of freedom that you have.
They think that that's what you think about it.
That's the name of it.
The name is called Almost Interesting.
Yeah.
And it's more than interesting, actually.
It's a good crowd.
Yeah.
There's this anecdote about how your mom would drop you off in the desert and then go to work, or something like that.
But I'm curious, you're a dad now.
You have been for, what, the last 18 years or something like that.
I'm curious how that has affected you being a father.
Do you have that sort of...
Laissez-faire attitude, or are you dropping your daughter off in the desert?
I will say, it was not that weird back then to drop your kids.
Not just drop them in the desert, but give us each a gun to kill time.
So we had a canteen.
We had a bag of lunch.
I would usually carry a rifle and my brother would have bullets like that, and we had a shotgun and a pistol.
It sounds so crazy.
It also sounds like every boy's dream, though.
It's every dream and she would drop us off at this Chevron and then she would work all day and she'd come back.
It took 20 minutes and we're on the outskirts and then we would just shoot and my brother would try to catch rattlesnakes and it was so bananas but
Listen, we'd have some Bactine in case everything went sideways.
But if something happened it would be like oh, of course something's going to happen.
But it never did.
So we'd shoot all day and then get back to the Chevron and she'd pick us up.
So we had eight hours.
Yeah.
What have you learned from being a dad?
I'm trying to be... very understanding and not so quick-tempered or sharp.
My dad was a little more hot off the handle, getting mad about stuff.
I just think it's a more, make sure they know you care.
Make sure they know you're around.
Because my friends are like, I've never missed a game in six years.
I'm like, Jesus.
I go, dude, if my dad was at three games a year, it would have been a different story.
But you just can't be at zero.
Right.
OK.
So after your first sexual experience, the girl said, and I quote, you'll get better at this.
My question, David, is have you?
It's not true.
Have you?
Well, she was very nice to have sex with me.
She was very cute.
The hard part about high school was not being famous.
I was really buddy-buddy with a lot of girls.
Here's a good example.
Telling me on the phone or telling me in person they can't stand.
Their boyfriend doesn't pay attention.
And then she's like, I want a guy like you.
You'd be the best boyfriend.
You're so nice, which obviously they don't want because I am too nice.
And then on the weekend, I hear like they broke up.
I'm like, oh my god, they're broken up.
This is perfect for me.
And so on Monday, I come to school, and she's like holding hands with the new guy.
I'm like, what the fuck?
And she's like, I know.
This is so dumb.
Let's start over where I can just talk to you about this guy.
I hate him.
And so I was like, just friend jail for so long.
College was not really a bonanza either.
I wasn't really the Bonnie Blue of ASU.
But there was one girl that I thought was gorgeous and she saw me at a frickin' comedy contest at ASU.
And I got third and she was so impressed that I was in this thing with my crummy act and we wound up dating a little bit.
I go, I got third.
You know I got third.
I didn't win.
She's like, I don't care.
I just like that you're trying something so weird, like it's so different.
And I was trying to be the same as everyone, but it was better to be a little different.
It took me a while to figure that one out.
That's a good lesson right there.
It was a good lesson.
There's this story that you tell or that you have written about.
That is.
It's basically it's Chris Farley's first day at SNL, working at SNL.
Yeah.
The two of you are staying at the same hotel in New York.
And you guys walk to 30 Rock together.
I want to know what that walk was like.
You know, I'd heard of Chris.
He's a very funny guy.
He's a big dude.
He's from Chicago.
He's got a lot of characters.
I was excited.
And then they go, oh, you're at the hotel they put you up at, and here's your first day.
And they go, oh, Chris Farley's over there.
So I say, hey, you want to walk over?
Yeah.
Hey, Davey.
So he comes over and I go, hey, man, let's walk over.
And we were both super excited.
I'd been there for four years.
I was the vet.
I'm like, it's rough out there.
So we walk over.
He's like, yeah.
And he's touching the ground.
He does all these, like, OCD things.
We didn't know what OCD was.
You take his wallet out and take the money out like every quarter and put it back every corner back in.
I'm like this peculiar.
I'm from arizona.
I don't like this.
I just kind of wrote up his quirky.
You know, when he come into my office, hit this, hit the exit sign, flick the light on and off every time, never questioned it, just thought he's doing a bit getting funny.
And so we got there and he goes.
I have to go to the atm And he would take out 20.
Then after we're walking, he goes, I gotta go to the ATM.
I go, Chris, why don't you take out more than 20?
He goes, oh, it was really perplexing.
I go, be a man, take out 200.
Then just go through, then you do it again.
It's not every second we have to go find an ATM.
And that was one of the lessons of being with him.
He's like, oh, he goes, there was one there.
We have one in Wisconsin.
He kept saying that about everything.
There's a McDonald's.
We have a Wisconsin.
I go, I know.
It's not on wheels.
It's in every city.
And then we shared an office.
There's a little tiny one.
So he had to walk through us, literally walk through it.
And then there's another little door.
And then there's Chris Rock and Sandler.
So that year was really just us all goofing around and bonding and writing sketches and laughing at each other and kind of feeling out what everyone's moves are.
Where's everybody good, where are they bad at?
So we had Greg Daniels from The Office is a writer.
Conan O'Brien.
Bob Odenkirk is a writer, performer.
Jack Handy, who's legendary.
Jim Downey, who was the head writer, Started Letterman.
He started the first years of SNL.
The guys I had heard about, I'm like, holy shit.
And all these people.
And then you've also got Mike Myers writing.
Dana Carvey.
There's Dennis Miller is there.
Kevin Nealon.
Farley.
You know, chris rock salem everyone's smart schneider is very good, but the farley of it all was really fun to be in that office because i got to see up close very nice wisconsin kid, Super sweet, super talented.
We all knew quickly, like, oh, shit, this guy, everything he does is funny.
He kind of played it dumb, but he was smart enough to understand everything we said.
Like every joke he would laugh at, even these weird throwaways, and you're like he literally gets everything and he's not like super dumb.
That was kind of his thing to play, his character, and a great time.
You know you're sitting around talking with people and you'll say you know, what time would you like to have experienced in the past?
And somebody might be like, oh, I don't know, Paris in the 20s or something like that.
I'm 45.
I think there's a micro generation of guys around my age who would say I want to be in that office with David Spade, Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and Chris Rock.
I mean, is it really, like, does it live up to the fantasy of that?
I mean, it's such a nice compliment.
You say that because I was looking up.
This is something on Instagram like a stack of cassettes that came out in one eight-month period.
It's like a Guns N' Roses...
Soundgarden and Nirvana, like there was.
All of them had big albums like Holy shit, because most of them were on SNL.
You know, back then
And when people say oh, the cast of SNL, I think when you guys were there I love hearing that because it is true when we kind of overlapped with the Mike Myers and these super talented guys, Dana and everybody.
And then we went on to us and then I was the last one to stay for Will Ferrell and Sherry O'Terry and Molly.
It was unbelievable to look back and then everything I did after that was easier.
Because I go?
Oh, because every time you're even in a conversation, someone is faster than you.
Every time you're talking about a joke, they're thinking about the next joke after that joke and you're like It's like being around a bunch of fucking AI supercomputers, because you're like everyone I know isn't like this.
I was kind of the funny one.
There's not that many people that are just really quick and good and sharp.
And so when I see it out there, I like it.
It's great to be around.
And thank you for saying that.
How often do people say bye-bye to you?
I loved buh-bye.
You know it's funny because that was a sketch on SNL about flight attendants.
When you leave and they go buh-bye buh-bye, buh-bye.
And they hate you.
Buh-bye.
Buh-bye.
Thanks, now.
Buh-bye.
Buh-bye.
For sure, it was every day for 10 years.
And it's for sure every flight.
And still they show it in training and stuff because American goes oh, they put that training right away.
They were like, this is what you cannot do.
And they stopped saying goodbye.
They had to say thank you, thank you for coming.
They said we had to take that out, and everyone was so mad about it.
I was like, I know.
It's so good to say goodbye.
It's perfect.
And I wasn't like super character sketch guy.
I just wanted a catchphrase that someone knew, because that was kind of what it was.
It's not like that anymore.
It's kind of weird.
SNL is not about the catchphrases.
It's true, right?
I haven't thought about that.
I mean, even Domingo is one of the big sketch.
Does he say something, or he just looks like It's just a sketch.
Right.
And so maybe they frown on that, but I really liked that.
And sometimes we'd push him too hard, like stupid sketch, you know, sketch phrases.
But that one kind of fell into place.
It wasn't too forced.
It was just a random sketch that worked and i knew it the next day on the plane.
You had to wait for a rerun to see it again.
So if you didn't see, you didn't see it, and it wasn't the beauty if we had this on the internet the next day.
Here's the funniest sketches from last night.
Here's this.
Here's instagram.
I like oh, you can't escape it now.
So We were just like if you got it and you didn't get the rerun in six months, that's it.
So I loved it.
Thank you.
I hear it all the time.
You also, there was David Spade's Hollywood Minute, which at the time was fucking savage.
I mean now it probably seems tame, I don't know, compared to what people say on social media, but at the time it was savage.
I mean, it sparked this years-long feud with Eddie Murphy.
Look, children, it's a falling star.
Make a wish.
How's your relationship with Eddie Murphy these days?
It's better, it's better.
Yeah?
I don't think it's ever gonna be great.
It was always pretty much non-existent.
I started off safely on the wrong foot.
Didn't know me, didn't know him about me, hated me.
In one day.
And I knew Chris Rock, was buddies with him, and...
Chris Rock actually got on the phone with me when I had a call and it did not go well.
I can tell you right now.
It was worse than imagined.
I was saddened by that, because I used to say when you make a Hollywood Mennonite, you gotta break some eggs, you know.
That was my big excuse.
But a lot of the writers, once it started going, from Jim Downey on, like, you gotta do this.
All the people they didn't like, they're like, take them out, take them out.
And I was just getting attention on the show going you're almost going to get fired, almost get fired.
And then Lauren going, do that again.
I'm like, oh, fuck yeah.
Like, you like this?
And I'm on the show?
Do it again the next week.
The formula was make it clever.
Try to make a clever joke.
That's not just a mean one.
And if they're too mean, we took it out.
But remember downtown Julie Brown?
Of course.
You were savage to her, too.
That was one I thought was funny.
Do you regret any of them?
Saying, wubba, wubba, wubba, my career's in trouble, trouble, trouble, was funny at the time.
And it was too much of a payoff, because it would do great.
It would really help me then.
These colleges are saying, come do stand-up.
And it sort of got a lot of things going.
And it kept my job.
But I got addicted, like, let's just do it again.
I remember I did one about Jim Carrey at rehearsal, and it didn't do well.
He's too beloved, like even by me.
I think the funny part was I'm a guy from Arizona.
They don't know.
I look pretty young.
I was 25.
I probably looked like 20.
It was the years of People Magazine.
So everything was fawning.
There was no negative.
And I'm like, look at this dickhead.
Your movie sucks.
And it was a goddamn, but everyone was waiting for it.
Like, oh, this is how we talk, but no one really says that.
And so you do it and then people like it.
And listen, that helps you get into a movie.
That helps you get everything else.
So it just was a good run of that.
And then I got too known on the show.
Then I was doing movies.
I sort of turned into one of them.
And then when I left SNL, they did a sketch and they did a joke about me and I did not like it.
Oh my God, the body's not even cold yet.
I didn't even leave the building yet.
And they're already feasting on me.
Like that's where it gets tricky, where I realized the career is so fleeting and so fragile and wispy that even Eddie Murphy, at the top of his game, had two movies that were kind of misses that it wouldn't even cross my mind it would bother and to say I'm just some random guy, but it's not going good for you, dude.
It's done.
You're cooked.
So I felt guilty for that because I could have started trouble, you know, and we finally patched up.
But I see him, I saw him at that SNL 50th.
He's a cool dude.
I mean my growing up, like you and Eddie Murphy Raw and all that shit was like I couldn't believe I'd see the guy in the same room.
So
Did you guys talk at SNL?
We talked a little bit, yeah.
Yeah?
And he's nice and I saw him once on the street in Beverly Hills and he drove by and he wrote on the window.
I was like, oh.
And he goes, hey.
And I was like, oh, my God, it's fucking Eddie Murphy.
Like, how crazy.
He's like, hey, man.
And I go, hey.
I go, I heard we're good.
And he goes, yeah, we're good.
And I go, all right.
And then we shook it.
All right.
Yeah, and I gave him this one.
I know what to do.
You also started at the same time as Rob Schneider, and it seems like you guys were in a pretty fierce competition.
I mean, as much as you were friends... Oh, yeah.
...you were obviously competing to have sketches go on the air.
This is from the book.
I would say the best way to sum that up is we're both stand-ups, we're both doing about the same middle acts that got paid pretty well to be middle 600.
Don't worry about it.
$600, which was huge for a middle.
Just saying.
Sometimes I got $1,000.
And Rob was the same.
And part jealousy on my part, he was very driven also.
We all want to do well on the show.
It just led to some tension.
Rob in fairness later said we all got a little crazy and he got a little crazy too.
You know, broke some eggs along the way also.
So we weren't our best version of ourselves.
This is your one big break, and every week you're not getting on.
You're more stressed and freaked out.
So everything really matters.
Anything can cause a fight.
You're so tense.
We're probably the best friendship we've been right now, because once you get through that and then you're getting older, then you look like you might both be in showbiz for a while.
So that's a little bit of relief that it's not just step off snl off a cliff, because you know you can just disappear.
And so i got on, just shoot me.
He was doing a hot chick in these movies and he was deuce bigelow, so everything was going okay.
So we We didn't talk a ton because everyone was doing stuff, but we did.
Grown Ups was great and the second one have we ever done another one?
Like, I do talk to him a lot more now.
Rob's a frequent flyer on Fox News, though.
Do you guys ever talk politics?
Well, we try not to.
But you know, Rob does have his thoughts and you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it's fine, i don't know if anyone's republican or democrat, they don't know what i am, i don't like.
I mean, i was on snl writing for, like bill clinton, and like Which one is he again?
They're like, Democrat.
I'm like, I'm from Arizona.
This is not like my forte.
So I'm writing on a sort of left political show.
I don't even know it.
I'm just trying to think of what's just funny.
What's the scenario?
What's funny about it?
So that's kind of how I still do it.
I don't want to get too internal into that stuff because it's such a bloodbath.
And so Rob does whatever he does.
But even if I like one of his pictures, people are like, you're liking your boy's picture?
Okay, stay in your lane.
I'm like, what lane am I?
It's just, it's a very dicey world right now and it's hard to be hard to have any opinion about anything.
But Rob, bless his heart, he gets out there and fucking sings like a canary.
And people get mad and he does not give a shit.
You know, I mean, it prompts a bigger conversation about comedy today, right?
I mean, you're out on the road.
Dandelion, your last special, which is on Amazon Prime, is great.
But I mean, comedy has changed a lot in the last generation, I suppose.
I mean, what is kind of your prognosis of new stand-up comedians right now?
I don't have a good answer to your question.
I don't really know what's next.
I know I don't want it to get politically where it's your one side comic or the other side comic.
I just like it when it's just all funny and people can take jokes as jokes.
And that's that's hard because people are always trying to sniff to see even in conversation, you can be on a date with someone and then they're like, hey, everyone's kind of, what'd you think about this?
What did you think?
And it could end or help something in two seconds.
And that's everyone's conversation all over the country.
I would love that to be tamped down a bit to where we can get back to talking about normal things.
But the comedy world, I don't know what's next.
I just try to keep up with what I think is the funniest in my own writing.
And mine's getting a little weirder because you start to get bored of certain things.
So I go to the Comedy Store and practice, then I go on the road and do it.
I think people know, at least in the podcast, from everything kind of what my humor is.
And when they show up, that's for sure what they'll get.
I spent some time last year with Nate Bargetze for a story that I wrote.
And you know.
What's interesting about that though, is if people know that, or I tell them that.
The first question they ask me, the only question they want to know, is is he a Republican or a Democrat?
Oh, yeah.
Which is just, it's so funny, you know what I mean?
All the things that you could ask, that's the thing that they don't know.
If they don't answer, they go, wait, he's from Nashville?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay, that tells me a little bit.
Okay, I'm getting there.
Exactly.
That's what they do, they go.
Exactly.
So, and Nate is another guy that I had seen, because someone said he thought I was funny and I didn't know him.
And they said, he's going to be in Austin.
Will you meet with him?
And I said, oh, for sure.
He came to my show, then I went to his.
I was like, he is good.
Then I was watching these clips where it was so more casual than me.
I was telling someone that I got a complaint on my Instagram, a complaint where they were like I saw your show and it was funny, but it looks like you're just making it up the whole time.
And I'm like, fucking thank God.
It's taken me 20 years to do that.
It's hard to... not look like you're memorizing it.
Yeah.
And so Nate's very casual.
His audience is very they listen.
They laugh at his setups.
They kind of know where things are going there.
Where's the twist?
And I do envy that because He was.
I can't say he's an overnight success, but he's about as fast as you can go up.
And also I hear how he's just like printing money.
It's crazy.
I think he's the richest, the biggest money-making comedian every year.
He is, yeah.
Yeah, last year he was, the year before.
He still makes me sick to my stomach, but yeah.
Yeah, good for him.
You are having a big, or you're going to have a big 2026.
I mean, you've got Outcome is this Apple TV movie that's coming out, right?
Oh, yeah, Jonah Hill, Keanu Reeves.
Yeah, you got to work with Keanu Reeves.
That sounds cool as hell.
Love Keanu Reeves.
Did it 1,000% to see Keanu Reeves.
And Jonah.
Jonah wrote it, too, and he directed it. to see Keanu and I play his neighbor.
So I'm like, I'm his annoying neighbor.
And I was like, I fucking love it.
What a stud, dude.
That guy, he's really what everyone's trying to be like.
Yeah, I agree.
Super good looking.
That's what I'm trying to be.
And then also nice, memorizes his lines.
Doesn't bitch on the set.
He's very friendly to everybody.
I hope that's a great one.
And then Busboys with Theo.
We did it all on our own, which is very weird to say let's just do a movie, let's write it.
And he's never done one, and I go, Well, let's just pay for it.
And then we'll just... If it works, it works.
But it's less stress.
The narrator says, it turns out it was more stress.
It is hard.
So this year, there's two other things that are supposed to go that would be great.
The problem, again, you shoot them all year and then they don't come out for...
Yeah, exactly.
This is your comeback tour right now.
Yeah, everyone says that.
It's good to see you again.
You know, we've talked a lot about comedy, funny things, friends, and stuff like that.
There's also a couple of things in your life that you could say have really been kind of marked by tragedy, right.
It's like your first stepfather died by suicide.
Chris Farley, obviously, you lost at a very young age.
Your sister-in-law, Kate Spade, died very tragically.
Your assistant, Skippy, tried to kill you at one point.
How do you internalize all this sort of grief and trauma and turn it into comedy?
Or do you?
Or do you not do that?
I don't know what I'm doing.
It's honestly weird how I can go right back to work or right back to.
I have to get my mind off it because it's too heavy.
You know, not going to Chris Farley's funeral I got a lot of shit for, but it was too much.
It hit me too hard.
I honestly think funerals are like, they need to be pushed back.
It has to be something.
It's just too much.
Everyone's sad.
Everyone's bawling.
You can't even talk.
And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm going to go in there and see him.
It's just I can't.
It's hard to talk about it so casually.
But all these things that happen, again, there was no choice but to keep going.
The world keeps going.
And you can sit in your house as long as you want and stare at the wall.
But even if you fly to Hawaii, I realize, well, I'm still here.
This is what I'm trying to get away from, my brain.
And then I go somewhere and I go.
Well, I'm thinking of the exact same things, but now I'm in a different location.
So it doesn't always fix everything.
It's really just time breakups, those horrible things happen, everything eventually hopefully levels out.
But keeping the sanity of it all, that's the hard part.
Because with all the mental problems people have over the years and you see it all over the place
It's getting harder and harder to just keep your head on straight.
So you just get through it, you know, the best I can.
There's really no easy answer, to be honest.
Yeah.
You spent a lot of time in sort of a short period of time, if that makes sense, with Chris Farley.
Yeah.
What's your fondest memory of him?
I think just small interactions of just being on a flight or in the trailer or on the set in between takes laughing.
And, like you said, front row seats to just being on a writer's table, being around all those guys Chris especially doing the movies, knowing literally everything about his life.
Like when you're with each other so much, you're just telling every story, every minutiae, everything about everything.
I knew a lot about him, and he did have a rough ride, you know?
So I really would have liked to still be doing stuff with him.
Yeah.
Even just buddies or movies or just hang out.
It's tough because you just never know.
Even that one, you kind of were like, I hope everything goes all right.
But he was so resilient on.
A few times I'd seen him where he was so messed up that I thought well, I wouldn't have made it through that.
But he can.
He's built like a truck.
And then when it happened, I was like, I finally caught up to him.
Yeah, nothing you can do.
I don't know, I just really do miss him for sure.
That was a tough one.
I just have a few more questions.
Is it true that you were nearly Joey on Full House?
That's not a total lie.
When I moved here, it was one of my first auditions, when I had a little heat on me, and I read for Joey.
I remember something about something in the laundry basket and I was trying to juggle these things.
I was like, hey.
I didn't even know what I was doing, but let's just say I safely didn't get that close.
But I remember I almost got a show called The Heat of the Night.
What a different career.
So if I got that, that show went for like seven years.
No comedy, I would have just been.
So full house would have been different.
But again, I guess you know when you look back at everything that happened, that went wrong it worked out.
But man, the turmoil of not getting stuff rough.
That stuff really roughed me up, like mentally, like when you're not getting stuff.
Young comedian special, I kept missing.
I kept auditioning them.
Ah, they went another way.
You were sixth, you were fifth.
You know, there was five, and they were like, you were seventh this year, you were sixth.
They got like Richard Belzer, who was like about 80, and I go isn't that a young?
Can you get a young comedian for that?
Like, I was 23.
And finally got on, and that got me on SNL, but...
There's so many misses with shows and movies.
Speaking of SNL, what was the biggest lesson you learned working, you know, with Lorne Michaels for those years?
I don't know.
I would say one thing is replaceable.
Like, they don't overly treat you like you're Tom Brady on that show.
And you can tell, you leave, the show's still going.
You want them to crumble.
Right.
And it happens now.
I watch people quit the show, and no one blinks.
They just keep going.
So the show is the star.
Yeah.
And you're a part of it, but you're not the show.
So, like, 30 years ago, a half-drunk Sean Penn gives you a tattoo on your arm.
He gave me two, yeah.
Two tattoos.
One of them was a Calvin, as in Calvin in the house.
So dumb, yeah.
Do you still have that tattoo?
I have this one, yeah.
And then he gave me another one later because I knew a little bit, and I saw him at a party in L.A.
And at SNL, I had my own segment.
They said, you can do whatever you want.
I was like...
He was saying in this conversation I wasn't supposed to be in.
He was just telling someone else.
He goes, I've been trying to do tattoos.
I did one on a potato the other day and like a pig's ear.
And I was like, what if he gave me a tattoo?
And then I looked, he was doing Letterman.
So I got his number from Lovett's.
Didn't tell him I got it from Lovett's.
I said, hey, Sean, I left a message.
If you're here, do you want to come over and do like a tattoo or something?
And he goes, yeah, just send me a car.
I know where we'll do it to.
And then he got lost.
He came two hours late.
I had to walk around in this thing.
I was doing bits about the tattoo parlor.
And then I picked one, and then he couldn't do it.
It was too complicated.
So we just had to make one up right then.
We got the comics.
I would never pick Calvin.
I was just like, which one could he do?
Because he doesn't know how to do it.
And the guy was like, this one.
OK, here we go.
And so he did it.
And I did jokes to him.
And then 10 years later, I was on another show.
And I said, you want to do another one?
He said, yeah.
So I did the same thing on this side.
Very interesting, cool dude.
Again, I like that old school kind of Joaquin Phoenix, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn.
Just old school Hollywood, real dudes that don't really give a shit, do whatever they want and then are good at their jobs.
Yeah.
Last two questions.
What will the first line of your obituary say?
Can I have another take?
That's good.
Maybe that, yeah.
What advice would you give that 18-year-old David Spade as he's just graduating from high school?
I mean, I wish I could say don't stress about everything, and I wish I could say it'll all work out, but I still do it.
So I have to wait another 10 years and then tell myself now.
Because there's always so many things that drive me nuts.
I get so mad.
I'm like, I got to calm down.
But this is the thing I know I will say one day is don't worry about it.
Like when I was at SNL, a good lesson was Lovitz was there.
And he was down in the dumps.
I barely knew him.
But I said, hey, man, what's wrong?
He was backstage.
And he goes, I'm only in two things.
Dane is in five.
And I go, well, who cares?
He goes, well, he's in five.
I'm barely in the show.
I go, but I'm watching.
I don't even think that.
I'm like, oh, there's Lovitz.
He's funny.
He's in one thing.
Oh, he's funny.
I like him.
But I go, oh, my God, I can't count Sketch.
I can't do that.
I just watch.
Like, he's really bum.
And he'd been there six years.
And immediately I did that.
And I knew it.
I knew the answer.
And I was just like, what the fuck?
All showbiz is just a competition.
It's just tough.
So I would say try to just realize it will all work out.
Ugh, such dumb advice, but yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, that's it.
David Spade.
This has been a dream.
This has been more than enough.
This was almost interesting.
More than enough with David Spade.
This is a dream come true.
You've got Outcome on Apple TV.
Yes.
You've got Busboys.
Coming out wherever.
Wherever.
On a kaleidoscope.
Yeah, exactly.
You're on tour here and there.
Go see him.
Listen to his podcast with Dana Carvey.
Thanks again, man.
Thank you very much.
Great to see you and thank you for saying all that.
