The comedic actor stopped by 'Conan' and dished on filming one of the film's dodgeball scenes

Conan type TV Show network TBS genre Late Night

He might be one of America’s favorite comedic actors, but during production of a particular scene in Billy Madison, Adam Sandler inspired more tears than chuckles.

During a Wednesday interview on Conan, Sandler recalled filming a sequence for the 1995 feature that involved the actor pelting a gaggle of child actors with dodgeballs. “It was our first movie that… we had some control of,” Sandler said of the Tamra Davis-directed film, for which he and Tim Herlihy penned the script. “There’s a dodgeball scene, and I’m hitting all these first graders really hard with a dodgeball… I hit some kid pretty hard and he gets upset and he starts crying.”

Though Sandler says he approached the scene with a sense of humor, the children’s parents weren’t as happy with his performance.

“The parents come up to me and they’re like, ‘That’s a kid. You nailed that kid!’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. That’s the scene!'” he remembered. “I said, ‘Didn’t they read the script?’ and they go, ‘They’re six, they don’t read yet.'”

“But, those kids grew up and guess who they are today? Uh… I don’t know,” Sandler jokingly concluded.

Conan airs weeknights at 11:00 p.m. ET on TBS.