How Adam Sandler Ended Up in Shorts at the Oscars

Mar 05, 2025

By Brian Hiatt

Conan O’Brien isn’t sure yet if he’d host the Oscars again. “Hey, ask me in a few months,” he told Entertainment Tonight, though he added that after the show he was “very happy, and I’m never happy…. The audience was really good.” In the same interview, O’Brien revealed how Adam Sandler ended up doing the bit where he showed up at the Oscars dressed to play basketball, in a hoodie and baggy shorts.

During his opening monologue, O’Brien called out Sandler’s outfit: “You’re dressed like a guy playing video poker at 2 a.m., Adam.”

“You know what, Conan? I like the way I look because I’m a good person. I don’t care what I wear or don’t wear! Did my snazzy gym shorts and fluffy sweatshirt offend you so much that you had to mock me in front of my peers?” Sandler said to O’Brien, before (supposedly) storming out of the event, telling the crowd, “You are all welcome to join me for a game of five-on-five basketball.”

It started with a different comedic concept, O’Brien told ET. “Adam and I are old friends,” he said. “And I called him up, and he liked the idea. And then he said, ‘I have another idea.’ And it involved him dressing in the way that he’s most comfortable, which, of course, was his idea, because he doesn’t want to put on a tux. And then his idea was so great. That was all Adam. Adam’s the king.”

Sandler presumably also added the capper to his appearance, when he approached a yellow-suited Timothée Chalamet in the audience, hugged him, and exclaimed, “Chalamet!”