Will Forte wrote an emotional first-person essay for Vulture in which he remembered his friendship with the late Val Kilmer, who died April 1 from pneumonia at 65 years old. The two actors were co-stars in Forte’s 2010 comedy “MacGruber,” which was based on the popular “SNL” skit of the same name. Kilmer starred as the villainous Dieter von Cunth. According to Forte, Kilmer “literally gave me the shirt off his back” while on set.
“MacGruber” was the start of a beautiful friendship between the two actors. Forte writes that when Kilmer “was having a dispute with his landlord” in Malibu, Calif., he asked if he could move in. Forte and Kilmer then lived together for two and a half months. It was during this period that Forte introduced Kilmer to reality television, specifically “The Amazing Race,” which Kilmer “got really into.”
“Then, at a certain point, he said, ‘Will, you and I have to go do “The Amazing Race.” We have to. Let’s do “The Amazing Race,’” Forte writes of Kilmer. “I’m like, ‘I am so fully in.’ We got really excited about it, and then we called our respective agents and managers, and they were like, ‘There’s no way you guys are doing that.’ That is, maybe to this day, the biggest regret of my whole career — that I never did ‘The Amazing Race’ with Val.”
“I think we would’ve gotten out very quickly, but it just would’ve been the experience of a lifetime,” Forte added about what could’ve been.
“I wish I had more time to remember the old stories,” he later adds. “There are so many memories I’m leaving out. I’m sure we talked about collaborating on other stuff together, but nothing really serious… He was always like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go do this thing for Francis Ford Coppola’ or something like that. Somehow, we lucked into getting him to do ‘MacGruber,’ but I didn’t know if I was going to get that lucky to get to work with him again. I settled for being his roommate.”
In the wake of Kilmer’s death, countless tributes have poured in from his famous co-stars and directors. Tom Cruise, who starred with Kilmer in the iconic movie “Top Gun,” was at CinemaCon this week to promote “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” and asked for a moment of silence in Kilmer’s honor.
“I’d like to honor a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer,” Cruise said from the stage at Caesars Palace. “I can’t tell you how much I admire his work, how grateful and honored I was when he joined ‘Top Gun’ and came back later for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’… I wish you well on the next journey.”
Read Forte’s full essay on Vulture’s website.
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