Adam Sandler is like you’ve never seen him before in the new sci-fi movie Spaceman. In his most dramatic role yet, he plays an astronaut on a solo mission to the far reaches of Jupiter to collect ancient space dust.
It’s a situation that leads him early on in the film to be called "the loneliest man in the world," as his character deals with the emotional stress of isolation. Speaking to GamesRadar+ and the Inside Total Film podcast, Sandler shares that life imitated art on the set too as he spent long stretches of time acting solo during filming.
"It made sense to the movie to try to keep myself alone throughout the shoot," he shares. "And yeah, it's sad, it's tough. It's like we were discussing, when you're in that capsule, you’re up, you're so far away from anybody else, there's no noise to block what you're thinking. It's tough to actually hear what's going on in your head sometimes, and where you can get relief from stuff that's painful."
At the center of Spaceman is Sandler’s character Jakub Procházka, who is dealing with his dwindling marriage to Carey Mulligan’s Lenka, his pregnant wife back on earth. As their connection fizzles out, Jakub starts seeing a peculiar creature lingering in the shadows of his ship.
Voiced by Paul Dano, the extraterrestrial spider called Hanuš begins to question Jakub’s mentality, endeavoring to discover what it means to be human. And Sandler explains that although they acted their roles separately, he and Dano were able to have some good rehearsal time in the lead-up to filming.
"Every time we got together it got better and better and more connected and [we] realized the way we were going to play the characters more and more," he adds. "Then Paul came by the set a few times while we were shooting while I was hanging in the air, and we had a great time getting to know each other."
Spaceman arrives on Netflix on March 1. For our full chat with Sandler and his co-star Dano, listen to the Inside Total Film podcast, out now. In it, Sandler opens up about taking on a different role than he's known for and Dano tells us how he prepared to play a space spider.
