Here’s How Dana Carvey Royally Pissed Off Madonna

David Spade told a story about Madonna’s one-time bestie, Sandra Bernhard, on a recent Fly on the Wall podcast. (Short version: Bernhard didn’t want to talk to Spade at the airport luggage carousel.) That tale inspired Dana Carvey to chime in with a Madonna story of his own. 

Flash back to 1991, when Madonna popped in to Saturday Night Live for a Wayne’s World cameo, a parody of her “Justify My Love” video. Carvey got to show off Garth’s prodigious schwing, while a “terrified” Mike Myers received his first on-screen kiss. “She was really nice, actually,” he later told the Chicago Tribune.

After the show, Madonna dropped by the afterparty. “She was cool, but I just stepped in it without knowing,” Carvey admitted. “She came over to our table at the party, and I said something really stupid.”

Carvey’s backhanded compliment to Madonna went something like this: “The thing I admire about you most is how fit you are.”

Maybe Carvey would have done better if he’d left out the “most”? The SNL comic explained that, in hindsight, he understands why she took offense. “She basically said, ‘The thing you admire about me the most is how fit I am? You know, I”m a fucking artist.’” 

In other words, Carvey said, it was a “fuck you, or something like that.”

Now it was Carvey’s turn to be insulted. “So I did Chris Farley's thing, which I’d seen him do, because I just was triggered. So I go, ‘Madonna, can you hear this? Let me turn it up for you.’” He demonstrated the middle-school maneuver for Spade, pointing his middle finger to the ground, then rotating the gesture into full “eff you” mode. 

“Crank it!” exclaimed Spade.

Madonna left the party, but returned later in the night, Carvey said. “She came back and sat on my lap. Not in a seductive way, but in a puppy-dog-friendly way.”

Spade, who’d barely worked up the nerve to approach Bernhard in an airport even though they went to the same high school, couldn’t believe Carvey had the audacity to flip off Madonna. “I had Wayne’s World, I got six Emmy nominations, so I wasn’t taking shit,” Carvey replied.

But more than 30 years after the fact, Carvey has regrets. “I made a mistake,” he admitted. “I apologize to her if she's listening to this podcast.” (Sure, Madonna is a Fly on the Wall superfan.)

Based on the lap action later in the night, Carvey believes he was forgiven. “I think the fact that I (flipped her off), she really respected it,” he said. “It’s like a street thing.”