The car crash that exposed a messy love triangle between David Spade, Jack Nicholson and Lara Flynn Boyle
The world of Hollywood A-listers is pretty insular. Getting a leg up in the industry is often more about who you know (or who you’re related to) than how much talent you have, and if the tabloids have taught us anything, it’s that the romantic world of the top 1% of stars is even more interconnected and self-contained than the professional side of things. Google your favourite actor, and you might be surprised to see who they’ve been married to. Uma Thurman has been married to both Ethan Hawk and Gary Oldman, Nicolas Cage has been married to Patricia Arquette and Lisa Marie Presley, and the list goes on.
Not surprisingly, these unions are often fraught with unfortunate crossovers. Celebrity love triangles have been keeping tabloids afloat ever since singer Eddie Fisher left his movie star wife, Debbie Reynolds, for her equally famous best friend, Elizabeth Taylor, in the 1960s.
Couple swapping, ruined friendships, and surprising reunions are part and parcel of the Hollywood story, so it’s no surprise that there are plenty of tales of famous people discovering the worst about their partner in the most awkward of ways. In a town teeming with examples, however, the story of how comedian David Spade learned that his girlfriend had been stolen by professional playboy and occasional actor Jack Nicholson.
Spade was a star of Saturday Night Live in the late 1990s and was dating Twin Peaks actor Lara Flynn Boyle when it all went down. On an evening out, the couple ended up smoking a joint with Nicholson, as one did in Hollywood in the late ‘90s, and the famously flirtatious actor asked Boyle on a date then and there. Spade remained silent, which irritated Boyle.
“I said, ‘I’ve been in this town long enough to know when I’m outranked,’” Spade revealed in 2015. “‘You’re either gonna go out with him or you’re not.’ She goes, ‘No way. He’s worse than Trump!’”
But despite her reassurances, the comedian’s famously self-deprecating brand of humour didn’t go down well. Not long after, Spade got a call from the beacon of entertainment journalism, The National Inquirer, informing him that Boyle and Nicholson had been in a car accident. According to the tabloid’s dubious reporting, Boyle crawled out of the sunroof of Nicholson’s smashed Mercedes and cried, “I have a boyfriend! I can’t be here!” Luckily, no one was injured in the accident except Spade, who said he spoke very little to Boyle after that.
As for Nicholson, it was all just par for the course, aside from the totalled car. His dating history is littered with a who’s-who of Hollywood. Aside from his 17-year relationship with Anjelica Huston, he’s dated everyone from Kate Moss and Melanie Griffith to Meryl Streep and Joni Mitchell. And let us never forget the time he flirted shamelessly with a stunned Jennifer Lawrence at the 2013 Academy Awards. Creeping up behind her while she gave an interview with her newly acquired Oscar, he traded some witty banter with her before casually wandering away, leaving her pretending to hyperventilate. She later revealed that he sent her flowers and a bottle of Cristal, which she gave to her mother.
