Kathy Bates was hesitant to join the cast of The Waterboy. On this morning’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the Oscar-winning actress revealed that she initially threw the script in the trash after reading the first 12 pages.

The conversation came up when host Drew Barrymore mentioned that she recently spent Yom Kippur with her cinematic soulmate Adam Sandler, who plays the main protagonist and Bates’ onscreen son Bobby Boucher in The Waterboy.

“I love Adam so much,” Bates gushed, before adding, “We had so much fun.”

However, Bates needed a little convincing to join the 1998 sports comedy film.

“I actually read the first 12 pages and threw it in the trash right next to my bed,” she admitted.

It wasn’t until her niece informed her of Sandler’s fame that she finally decided to sign on.

“My niece Linda, who’s worked with me since ’94, she came over and she saw this in the trash and she said, ‘What is this?’ I said, ‘Oh, it’s some football script. I don’t know what it is,’” Bates recalled. “And she pulled it out of the trash and she said, ‘Adam Sandler! You don’t know ‘The Chanukah Song?!’ I said, ‘No, I haven’t watched.’ She said, ‘You have to do this. You have to do this.’”

“And so I said yes,” Bates added. “And I have to say, it’s one of my favorite all-time experiences.”

Bates previously looked back on her time shooting The Waterboy in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, telling the outlet that her “Achilles heel” as a person and as an actor was that she took things “way too seriously.”

“This was an opportunity to just let it all hang out, and just play and be silly, and it turned out to be one of the most wonderful experiences of my whole life,” she continued. “I felt so free, I could do anything.”

The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays on CBS. You can check the website for local airtimes.