Producers originally suggested Roseanne Barr give the iconic song its Saturday Night Live debut, Adam Sandler recalls.
“Do you feel like you’re the Mariah Carey of Hanukkah?” is already a fantastic interview question to ask Adam Sandler, the man responsible for arguably the most famous song about the Jewish holiday. His answer, by the way, is an amused and humble, “No.”
Thanks to the question, he shared some extra insight into the now-historic 1994 debut of “The Chanukah Song” on Saturday Night Live. He tells the story around the 2:40 mark.
“When I wrote that, that week on Saturday Night Live, Roseanne Barr was the host. And they were talking about Roseanne singing it, and she was nice enough to say, ‘No, let Adam do it. He wrote it, that’s his song.”
We can only assume Sandler is referring to SNL producers here. Had Roseanne agreed, the national debut of “The Chanukah Song” might have gone down as just another jokey reference to her controversial rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a San Diego Padres game in 1990. Remember, we barely had the Internet back then. With less to distract us, nonsense like this remained in the public zeitgeist for much longer.
Thankfully, Sandler debuted the song himself, and the rest is history.
