The air inside NBC’s Brooklyn studio was always a strange mix of coffee, hairspray, and overheated stage lights. It was 1988, and Adam Sandler was still the “new guy” on The Cosby Show, a wiry, quick-grinning kid with a voice that seemed to trip over itself when he talked too fast.

You were new, too. A fresh guest role had dropped you onto the set for a few weeks — playing a college friend of Theo’s — and your job was simple: deliver your lines, hit your marks, and don’t mess up in front of the live studio audience.

On your second day, you found Adam leaning against the craft services table, staring at a plastic cup of flat Sprite.

“Careful,” he said, noticing you. “It’s a trap. You drink that, and suddenly you’re missing your cue because you’re in the bathroom.”

You chuckled, and he smiled like he’d been waiting all day to earn that laugh.

During rehearsals, Adam was the kind of guy who improvised just enough to make the crew snicker. You were the kind who played it safe. But when your scenes overlapped, he’d nudge you under his breath — “Loosen up, they’re not gonna fire you” — and it worked.

The first time you two hung out outside the studio was after a Thursday night taping. A bunch of the cast went to a dim pizza place down the street, but somehow, after the third slice, it was just you and Adam still sitting there, arguing about whether Billy Joel’s The Nylon Curtain was underrated or overrated.

By the next week, you had a routine: late-night walks from the studio to the subway, Adam making stupid voices to narrate passing strangers (“And here we see the wild Brooklyn hipster in his natural habitat…”), you trying not to laugh too loud.

It wasn’t until one of those nights — a drizzly, cold walk in March — that he stopped mid-story, shoved his hands deep in his jacket pockets, and said, “You know, you’re the only person I’ve met here that doesn’t treat me like I’m a joke.”