David Spade Recalls the Time Jack Nicholson Asked Out Girlfriend Lara Flynn Boyle Right in Front of Him
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David Spade might not be one of the first people associated with the title “ladies’ man,” but his relationship history proves it should be. The funnyman, known for romancing beautiful women such as Heather Locklear, Kristy Swanson, and more than the occasional Playboy Playmate, was even the “campus Casanova” in high school. And yet, he still thinks about the time he lost girlfriend Lara Flynn Boyle to a Hollywood A-lister with even more game: Jack Nicholson
Spade dated Boyle briefly after her 1998 divorce from John Patrick Dee III… up until ‘The Shining’ star made a move on the actress. “Nicholson asked Lara Flynn Boyle out in front of me, while we were all smoking a doob somewhere,” Spade told Details. “She got mad because I didn’t stick up for her. I said, ‘I’ve been in this town long enough to know when I’m outranked. You’re either gonna go out with him or you’re not.’ She goes, 'No way. He’s worse than Trump!’”
The next thing Spade knew, the National Enquirer called to ask him about his girlfriend being involved in a car crash with Nicholson. In the early hours of July 8, 1999, the ‘Chinatown’ star totaled the Mercedes that he was driving in the Hollywood Hills. No one was injured, but Boyle was afraid her relationship would be damaged. Spade noted she “crawled out of the sunroof and yelled, 'I have a boyfriend! I can’t be here!’”
Soon, she had a new boyfriend, one who was 33 years older than her. Just two months after the cash, Nicholson took Boyle as his date to the Emmys and they began an on-again/off-again relationship for the next several years. Spade, a nominee for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on ‘Just Shoot Me,’ took his mother to the same awards show.
Related: What Happened After Jennifer Lawrence Met Jack Nicholson?
Don’t feel too bad for Spade about that, though. The ‘Saturday Night Live’ alum has had plenty of dates since then. (Nicholson, now 78, has remained a bachelor; Boyle married Donald Ray Thomas II in 2006.)
What’s sadder is what Spade revealed to the magazine about his late friend Chris Farley, who died of a drug overdose at 33 in 1997.
“People still give me s–-t about him: 'I wish you had died instead of Chris Farley,’” Spade said. “That’s on Twitter almost every day.”
He added, “I don’t like the assumption that I think I was in the same league as Chris. I was not. He was his own superstar.”
Spade and Farley’s big hit, ‘Tommy Boy,’ turns 20 this year.
