When blatant sexism and Adam Sandler got Rose McGowan blacklisted by Hollywood: “What in the fuck is going on?”
Making friends with Adam Sandler is one of the easiest ways to guarantee a Hollywood career, with the actor and producer having spent the last three decades acquiring a number of regular collaborators who’ve worked with him on multiple productions.
Whether they’re writers, directors, producers, or actors, the star’s Happy Madison company has its in-house repertory of creatives and on-camera talents who can sleep easy knowing that regardless of which direction their career is heading, Sandler’s open-door policy will give them a job sooner rather than later.
It also helps that, by all accounts, he’s got a reputation for being a tremendously nice guy. Sure, the vast majority of his movies are terrible, and he’s responsible for one of the most Razzie-laden filmographies in Hollywood history, but there’s a reason why the folks who enter his inner circle tend to stay there.
Unfortunately, the Sandler effect can also cause negative consequences, as Rose McGowan discovered when she went public with a casting call for a Happy Madison flick, which she felt compelled to share with the world. The note declared that any female actors auditioning for a role in an upcoming project were required to show up wearing a “black (or dark) form-fitting tank that shows off cleavage (push-up bras encouraged).”
While she didn’t cite the picture or the people behind it, McGowan couldn’t have been clearer when she revealed that the star of the film’s name “rhymes with Madam Panhandler.” Technically, she didn’t name anyone specifically, but exactly one week later, the actor shared that she “got fired by my wussy acting agent because I spoke up about the bullshit in Hollywood.”
All she did was call out the blatant sexism the unnamed movie was looking for in its female cast members, and she was dropped from her agency because of it. This was in the summer of 2015, and based on the timeline of which Sandler-backed features went into production around then, it may have been Netflix’s The Do-Over, which started shooting weeks after McGowan went public.
“The wardrobe part was dumb enough,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “The part that made me laugh was where it said, ‘Make sure you read the script so you understand the context of the scene’. That was the part that made me laugh the hardest.” It may have cost her an agent, but McGowan didn’t hold Sandler personally responsible.
“I’m not trying to vilify Adam Sandler,” she clarified. “Although someone did tell me that when he did his Netflix deal, he said, ‘I signed with Netflix because it rhymes with ‘Wet Chicks’. I mean, what? What in the fuck is going on?”
Incredibly, that’s true, with Sandler releasing a statement after inking a contract with the streaming service sharing that he “immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only: Netflix rhymes with ‘Wet Chicks’.” Popular, he certainly is, but progressive? Not in 2015, anyway.
