Adam Sandler Jokes Being PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive Would Be ‘Good for the World’ (Exclusive)

Adam Sandler has a solid reason why he should be declared the Sexiest Man Alive.

“It's something that I think is good for the world,” the 57-year-old Saturday Night Live alum jokes to PEOPLE.

The quip comes just days after the star of the new Netflix movie Spaceman appeared at the People’s Choice Awards Feb. 18 to accept the People’s Icon Award — but pretended that he thought he was getting the PEOPLE Magazine honor instead.

He blamed the mix-up on a “miscommunication” between him and his agent, and read from his speech for an SMA crowning instead.

"My name is Adam Sandler and I am the Sexiest Man Alive, can I get a hell yeah?” he said.

“To the PEOPLE Magazine’s academy members of hotness and sexual attractiveness, I would like to say thank you for recognizing me as the man who made our entire country the horniest this year and was by far the most-talked-about person in the bedroom by couples or throuples during fantasy role plays and sloppy time,” he continued. “Can I get another hell yeah?”

Sandler then joked that he’d been eagerly anticipating becoming SMA for years.

“I am trying to be gracious, PEOPLE Magazine, but I have to admit three words keep popping into my head right now: ‘It's about freaking time!’ For decades, Adam Sandler has been waiting patiently on the sexy bench,” he said.

Sandler does show some skin in the new Netflix movie Spaceman. He plays Jakub Prochazka, an astronaut on a lengthy solo mission in outer space. Unhappy while at home alone on Earth, his pregnant wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan) decides to leave him.

As Jakub senses Lenka slipping away, he’s visited by an alien-spider named Hanus that makes its away aboard the spaceship and listens to Jakub talk about his relationship. 

Hanus refers to Jakub throughout the movie as “skinny human,” but Sandler jokes that it wasn’t his favorite phrase.

“It was probably the worst thing I could have seen in the script,” he says. “Chubby astronaut would've been nice. Chubby astronaut next time, please.”

One of Sandler’s costars in the movie is his 15-year-old daughter Sunny, who has a brief cameo at the beginning of the film. Sandler and his wife Jackie are also parents to Sadie, 17. Both girls, who want to become actors, have appeared with their dad in his previous films like Hubie Halloween and You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.

Sandler tells PEOPLE he and Jackie encourage them to watch his Spaceman costar, three-time Oscar nominee Mulligan, for acting pointers. “We go, ‘Well, watch Carey,’” he says.

“I love Carey. Listen, it's stuff she does in a movie, there's no way I could do it. There's no way I could. I just watch her and I say, ‘Well, that is just the next level of acting,’” Sandler continues.

“I was just trying to make sure I stayed out of the way for Carey. She's amazing. It's so real. It's so effortless,” he continues.

Sandler recalls being so moved during one scene in with Lenka tapes a message to Jakub, explaining that she’s leaving him.

“This one scene — I was not in it — but I was there that day and I watched Carey do this kind of saying goodbye scene to me. And my goodness, I couldn't believe how amazing it was to watch and how deep it went like that,” he adds.

Spaceman streams on Netflix Friday, March 1.