Will Forte has shared memories of his friendship with Val Kilmer, including a plan the two once had to compete on The Amazing Race as a team. Kilmer, who passed away on April 1 at the age of 65 from pneumonia, met Forte while working on the 2010 film MacGruber, based on a recurring sketch from Saturday Night Live.
In a first-person essay for Vulture, Forte reflected on how their connection extended beyond the set. He recalled Kilmer offering support and generosity during production. “He literally gave me the shirt off his back,” Forte wrote.
After filming, the actors remained in touch. During a period when Kilmer was involved in a dispute with his landlord in Malibu, he asked Forte if he could stay with him. They ended up living together for more than two months.
Forte introduced Kilmer to The Amazing Race while they were roommates. “He came back home at some point when I was watching it and was like, ‘What are you watching that garbage for?’” Forte recalled. “I said, ‘It’s pretty good. You should sit down and watch it. Give it a try before you shit on it.’”
Kilmer eventually became a fan of the show. After watching several episodes, he approached Forte with an idea. “‘Will, you and I have to go do The Amazing Race. We have to. Let’s do The Amazing Race,’” Forte wrote. “I’m like, ‘I am so fully in.’ We got really excited about it.”
Their excitement faded after conversations with agents and managers. “They were like, ‘There’s no way you guys are doing that,’” Forte wrote. “That is, maybe to this day, the biggest regret of my whole career — that I never did The Amazing Race with Val.”
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Forte added that he had no illusions about their chances. “I think we would’ve gotten out very quickly, but it just would’ve been the experience of a lifetime.”
He also touched on how the two occasionally discussed working together again, though nothing came of it. “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.”
Tributes to Kilmer have continued since his death. During CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Tom Cruise paused his stage appearance to acknowledge Kilmer’s legacy and their work together on Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick, asking the audience for a moment of silence in Kilmer’s honor.
