Hollywood Legend Makes Rare Appearance at SNL50: Jack Nicholson Introduces Adam Sandler

Jack Nicholson made a rare public appearance tonight on the SNL50 special episode of Saturday Night Live, which celebrated five decades of the iconic sketch comedy series. It followed SNL50: The Homecoming Concert, which had performances from David Byrne, Miley Cyrus, Cher, the Backstreet Boys, and Post Malone with the surviving members of Nirvana, among others. Nicholson, from the audience, introduced Adam Sandler—who sang his own song titled ’50 Years.’

Sandler yelled, “Let’s hear it for Jack, baby!” while being introduced.

The song riffed on members of the audience, like Steven Spielberg, as Sandler joked about SNL writers “getting wasted at the after party, and loudly telling everybody that Jaws was overrated.”

Sandler also paid tribute to past cast members, including many who are now deceased: “Fifty years of cast members saying, ‘I think our cast is the greatest of all time, but we all know that the first cast was the best. And because of them, we got four years of Eddie Murphy. Eight years of Will Forte. Five years of Jan Hooks and Gilda. Six of Victoria, eleven of Che. … Six years of our boy Farley, five of our buddy Norm,” Sandler sang.

Nicholson, now 87 years old, hasn’t appeared in a film since 2010’s How Do You Know, a romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd. Sandler, meanwhile, has a lot on his plate; he’ll be starring in Happy Gilmore 2 (reprising his role from the 1996 classic sports comedy), a reunion with Noah Baumbach in his next film Jay Kelly, and a new project with Uncut Gems director Josh Safdie that seems to be another sports-gambling-related drama.