Val Kilmer’s death on Tuesday prompted heartfelt tributes from friends, fans and former co-stars, including “Saturday Night Live” alum Will Forte, who shared a particularly sweet story about living with Kilmer, making a movie together — and “the biggest regret” of his career.
“I used to watch The Amazing Race, and he came back home at some point when I was watching it and was like, ‘What are you watching that garbage for? Come on, that stuff’s going to rot your mind,’” Forte recalled Friday in his remembrance for Vulture.
The reality television series sees contestants sent to random international locales to hunt for clues. While Kilmer was initially skeptical of its entertainment value, the “Heat” star apparently became a giant fan and avid watcher during his time living with Forte.
“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 wrote Friday. “I’m like, ‘I am so fully in.’ We got really excited about it, and then we called our respective agents and managers.”
The actor said his representatives were adamantly opposed, prompting him to acquiesce.
“That is, maybe to this day, the biggest regret of my whole career — that I never did The Amazing Race with Val,” he admitted. “I think we would’ve gotten out very quickly, but it just would’ve been the experience of a lifetime.”
Evan Agostini/Associated Press
Forte left “SNL” in 2010 but followed in a long line of former alumni who turned their most beloved sketch into a movie. His MacGuyver spoof “MacGruber,” in which the titular fictional U.S. Army Ranger consistently fails his mission, was ultimately a box office flop.
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However, Forte fondly remembered making the now arguable cult classic, where he cast Kilmer as the villain Dieter Von Cunth. The actors later lived together for nearly three months in 2011, when Kilmer was in the middle of a move and needed a place to stay.
His daughter Mercedes Kilmer told the New York Times on Tuesday that her father, who was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, later recovered — but died of pneumonia.
Kilmer, a true character actor in the body of a leading man, was 65 years old.
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