The movie from Happy Madison Productions also stars David Spade and other familiar faces.
When Lauren Lapkus landed in Hawaii to shoot “The Wrong Missy,” she quickly realized that when Adam Sandler is the boss you’re not just making a movie, you’re also now part of Happy Madison’s extended family.
Happy Madison Productions, which Sandler launched two decades ago to produce movies for himself and his friends, made the Netflix comedy in which Lapkus stars as a cheerfully bonkers woman who won’t take no from the mild-mannered businessman played by David Spade.
And while Sandler himself doesn’t appear in it, the movie that debuts on Netflix on Wednesday, May 13 has Happy Madison veterans on screen — in addition to Spade, such regulars as Rob Schneider, Nick Swardson, and Jackie Sandler, Adam Sandler’s wife — and off.
“One thing that’s really nice is that there is a feeling of family within the production because a lot of people are actually related. But even if they’re not related, they’ve worked together for like 20 years,” says Lapkus, a veteran of TV series such as Netflix’s “Orange Is The Black” and HBO’s “Crashing.”
“He’s really loyal to his crew — people doing hair and makeup and every single department — so most of the people had worked on Happy Madison films for decades,” she says. “It was nice to feel like I was immediately brought into the fold that way.”
Lapkus says she was initially attracted to the project because Spade, who she’d grown up watching on “Saturday Night Live” and had long admired for other movie and TV comedies, was attached to play her unwitting love interest.
“That was the main push behind me going to the audition, but once I really got into the material and got to do the movie it was so fun because this role is just so crazy,” she says. “Missy truly can say anything, and she’s just living on another planet, so it’s very fun to play a character like that.
