Saturday Night Live took a moment out from the comedy to pay tribute to former host Val Kilmer.
A photo of the Batman Forever star, who died of pneumonia at age 65 on Tuesday, flashed onscreen just before the goodnights at the end of Saturday’s show, hosted by Jack Black.
Kilmer hosted SNL on Dec. 9, 2000, with musical guest U2. During the episode, the actor gamely parodied two of his most iconic roles: Top Gun‘s Ice Man in a sketch about the aging ex-Navy fighter pilot thinking he was going back to the danger zone as a commercial airline pilot, and The Doors‘ Jim Morrison in a take on VH1’s Behind the Music in which the late rocker starts a supergroup in heaven called the Great Frog Society, with Jimi Hendrix (Jerry Minor), Janis Joplin (Molly Shannon), Keith Moon (Horatio Sanz), Buddy Holly (Jimmy Fallon), and Louis Armstrong (Tracy Morgan).
During the 2000 episode, Kilmer also played Jeb Bush in a political soap opera sketch called “Palm Beach,” a giggly actor who plays a gynecologist in “Veronica & Co,” a talk show hosted by Shannon as a European supermodel, and did an impression of Burt Bacharach in another.
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Val Kilmer as Jeb Bush, Ana Gasteyer as Katherine Harris on ‘Saturday Night Live’ on Dec. 16, 2000. Mary Ellen Matthews/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty
Kilmer returned years later for a memorable cameo in the Lonely Island‘s infectious 2011 digital short, “Best Friends,” starring Andy Samberg and Katy Perry. The Tombstone star popped up as a brilliant lunatic who forces his way into a friendship with the pair and a handsome drug addict, played by Matt Damon.
On Thursday, Kilmer’s Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick costar Tom Cruise paid tribute to his onscreen rival. “I’d like to honor a dear friend of mine, Val Kilmer,” Cruise said, while onstage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas to promote Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. “I really can’t tell you how much I admired his work, how much I thought of him as a human, and how grateful and honored I was when he joined [the] first Top Gun and came back for Top Gun: Maverick. He gave a lot to all of us with his performances.”
After asking the audience to observe a moment of silence to honor the late star’s life and body of work, he finished by saying, “Thank you, Val. I wish you well on your next journey.”
Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.
