James Spader Reveals That He Once Threw Up During a Dinner With The Kennedys

PRETTY IN PINK, James Spader, 1986
Paramount Pictures/Everett Collection

Actor James Spader, best known for shows like The Blacklist, has a lot of famous friends. When he was young, Spader attended Phillip’s Academy and met John F. Kennedy Jr. there. He became longtime friends with the Kennedys and was known to appear during some of their high-society dinners. Spader is a master storyteller — just Google any of his talk show appearances and you’ll have a new appreciation of the creative, as he never tells the same story twice. He saved this doozie of a story for Jimmy Fallon, where Spader  revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that one of the dinners with Jackie at the Kennedy household didn’t go so well.

Spader joked that one day, he and John (as he called him) had a “festive afternoon,” with the implication that there was a lot of drinking involved. Then, they had to attend dinner with the Kennedys including John’s mother, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Jackie O). Prior to dinner, he said that they were watching TV in the Kennedy’s library and that he wasn’t interested in whatever was on.

James Spader (L) and John F. Kennedy Jr. (2nd from R) attend a party at Tavern on the Green in New York City on December 12, 1977

Guy Marineau/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images

Spader admitted that he was “zoned out” and “things being festive and all,” he started munching on a big bowl of pistachios they had out. However, by the time he unknowingly finished the whole bowl, Jackie O called them down for dinner. He described who was there at the small family dinner and how as the dinner went on he began feeling very hot and almost had a cold sweat going on.

Just as he started feeling nauseous and got up to excuse himself, Spader said that he threw up right on his plate. Now, one might think that Jackie O would be horrified, but he said that she laughed and said “Good shot, Jim!” and that his friend John laughed so hard that he fell back in his chair. John was the one that ended up getting in trouble! Spader recalled that Jackie O scolded him by saying, “’D*mmit John, if I told you once, I told you a dozen times. Do not lean back in those chairs. Now see what’s happened. Look what you’ve done. It’s just so rude.’” Watch the entire interview below:

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