(NEW YORK) — The real-life doppelganger of movie star Adam Sandler joked that the two are now “besties” after Sandler invited him to a red-carpet premiere this week.
Max Kessler, 23, said he has been told for as long as he can remember that he looks like the Happy Gilmore star.
Kessler himself was shocked, however, when he learned Sandler’s character in his new Netflix original film, The Do-Over, also has the name Max Kessler.
“I watched the preview [and] at first I was cracking up; then I was like, ‘This is pretty freaky’ and then I was like, ‘This has to be fake,’” Kessler said in an interview that aired today on Good Morning America.
Kessler posted a split photo of himself and Sandler last month on Reddit and Imgur, where it’s been viewed more than eight million times. The attention caught Sandler’s eye, and the comic actor Kessler to a ‘funny face-off.’
“He said, ‘Can you do this, Max, with a funny face?’” Kessler recalled. “And I responded with a funny face.”
Sandler extended a red carpet invitation to Kessler for the premiere of The Do-Over, which the lookalikes attended last Monday in Los Angeles. Sandler, 49, described Kessler on the red carpet as, “a younger better-looking version of me.”
Kessler said, “When I actually shook his hand, or greeted him, he was just as I expected: very down-to-earth, funny.”
The two even joked on the red carpet about their new friendship, with Sandler joking, “We do everything together now.”
“Yeah, we’re besties,” Kessler replied.
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