Sometimes an actor finds themselves in a role so iconic, they become synonymous with their character.

It’s not something that happens in every career, and it’s not always a positive thing, but in Chris McDonald’s case he couldn’t be more grateful to be known to fans as Shooter McGavin.

The iconic Happy Gilmore villain is beloved by fans around the world for his smug personality and quick one-liners, but McDonald tells 9honey Celebrity that when he was first offered the role, he actually turned it down.

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We spoke with McDonald while he was in Australia promoting his new campaign with Uber One, celebrating Macca’s being back on the platform, and he said he couldn’t be more thankful he eventually came “to [his] senses” almost two decades ago.

Watch the video above.

Happy Gilmore was set to be shot in Canada, and McDonald had just spent three months shooting there with his three young children waiting for him back home. 

“I’m a bad father, and I don’t want to be a bad father,” he explains.

“I want to go home and love my kids.”

After being offered the role by writer and star Adam Sandler and director Dennis Dugan, McDonald made the tough decision to turn it down, explaining that he’d read the script and thought “it was great”, but ultimately needed to be at home with his kids. 

The decision wasn’t made lightly, though; McDonald says he did truly love the script, and it was something that was still on his mind for weeks.

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“I went across to Washington State, won a golf tournament, and thought, ‘I wonder if that thing’s still around, that Happy Gilmore thing’,” he says.

So, he asked his team if they could set up a meeting with Sandler. 

“I went up and met him, I laughed for half an hour and I thought, ‘I gotta do this movie’,” McDonald shares.

But, he would only sign on to do the film if one condition was met.

“The great Dennis Dugan, our director, says [to Sandler], ‘We got McDonald, awesome! Except there’s one thing.’

“And the one thing was, ‘You gotta bring his family here’.”

So, while all the other actors on set were put up in a hotel room, McDonald was in his own house.

“My kids were there and my wife was there and it turned out perfectly,” he adds.

“We had a great vacation together … two of them were toddlers and one was in kindergarten.”

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The Thelma and Louise star says, looking back, he couldn’t be happier with the decision to meet with Sandler and reconsider the role, even though it’s gotten him into some sticky situations over the years.

Once upon a time, McDonald was in an airport and ran into a fan who recognised him as Shooter McGavin and assumed the star’s personality was similar to that of his character’s – just kind of mean.

So, McDonald decided to lean in.

”I fake him out,” McDonald recalls of the interaction.

“They go, ‘We’re big fans, could I get a shot?’ And I went, ‘Come on, piss off’ or something, and I kept walking.”

Leaving his fans behind baffled, McDonald then turned around and did his iconic Shooter ‘finger guns’ move.

“They went, ‘Oh my god!’ And I came over and signed for them,” he laughs.

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“Most of the time I embrace it because I’m so grateful for this gift that keeps on giving called Happy Gilmore… It’s been a real fun run playing Shooter.”

And McDonald has had so much fun playing into his character over the years that he’s now returning for the sequel, set for release on Netflix later this year. 

He says when he received the call asking him to reprise the role of Shooter McGavin, making the decision to say yes took him as long as it takes to snap your fingers.

“I was all in,” he assures us.

“This movie has been the gift that keeps on giving to me and I always didn’t want to, you know, not be in the sequel … it took [Sandler] long enough!”

The first film was released in 1996, and McDonald says for the past 19 years he’s been “praying” the team would one day decide to revisit the story.

“I would remind them every six to eight years going, ‘it’s time! What do you think?’

“So they finally did it and I was over the moon happy and, having shot it now, I know it’s getting all put together in the in the editing process, and it’s gonna be a riot.”

Nine Entertainment Co (the publisher of this website) owns and operates the streaming service Stan.

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