Brian Bowen Smith
David Spade
Tuesday, April 25, 2023 | 2 a.m.
“Saturday Night Live” alum David Spade has been performing for years on various Las Vegas stages, most recently at the Mirage Theatre in tandem with another comedian best known for a TV role, Ray Romano.
Now the star of classic comedies like “Tommy Boy” and “Joe Dirt” is changing venues and comedy partners for his next round of Vegas shows. Spade and Nikki Glaser will land at the Venetian Theatre on April 28 and 29, where they are scheduled to perform six more times throughout the year from June through November. Tickets start at $49 and are available at ticketmaster.com.
“I think the Strip is important. It’s still a prestigious gig to have,” Spade said. “If you can have a billboard or your name on [a casino marquee] on the Strip, it’s a big deal. I’ve played Venetian before and it’s always been nice, always just right there and it has everything you need. I had a great time, and the Mirage was also a really nice experience and it has changed, got bought out [by Hard Rock International].”
The 58-year-old standup performer and actor said he’s been friends with Glaser for years, and although there wasn’t a lot of strategy behind the double-billing, he’s looking forward to seeing how their styles complement each other.
“It’s going to be different than being with Ray. Ray is very clean, and I’m not saying Nikki is that dirty, but Ray is clean,” he said. “I can’t predict how it will be with Nikki, but I think it will be a good time.”
Spade’s most recent work includes his podcast “Fly on the Wall” with fellow “SNL” star Dana Carvey, and last year’s successful Netflix special “Nothing Personal.” Of course, he’s a frequent collaborator of Adam Sandler’s, stretching back to the 2010 hit film “Grown Ups” through 2020’s Netflix flick “The Wrong Missy,” in which Spade starred and Sandler produced.
“‘The Wrong Missy’ was a pretty hard R-rated comedy and it did well, so we’re looking for another one,” he said, describing a current project under development. “It’s nice that there’s a big audience again for those old-school comedy movies. I grew up on ‘Animal House’ and ‘Trading Places’ and stuff like that, and a lot of those were R or PG-13.”
Very recently announced is a comedy game show called “Snake Oil” with Spade hosting coming soon to the Fox Network. He described it as “like ‘Shark Tank’ except a comedic version where one of the inventions is fake, so contestants have to pick one to invest in and sort of bet money on, and they lose if they pick the wrong fake one. The pilot was pretty interesting, and I guess it came out OK.”
Spade said he’s excited to return to Las Vegas to start something new, and overall, just happy to be performing standup and finding TV and movie projects after an already distinguished comedy career.
“It’s a fun business to be in,” he said. “I never really thought about this happening, but it has happened recently that someone shows their kids a movie like ‘Tommy Boy,’ then they’re showing it to their friends, so now there are [younger fans] seeing this stuff. “‘Benchwarmers’ came up on the Netflix top 10 movie list, and that was [surprising], but there’s kids playing little league and that’s their favorite movie. It’s a whole other wave. And it’s great that those movies are out there still, because it used to be that if you weren’t there when they happened, they’d go away.”
