Comedian and SNL alum Will Forte paid tribute to Val Kilmer, his friend and MacGruber co-star, in a recent piece for Vulture, dropping a surprising bit of lore in the process: Forte and Kilmer once spent nearly three months as roommates.
Kilmer, a Hollywood icon best known for his roles in Top Gun, Batman Forever, Heat, and Tombstone, died of pneumonia earlier this week, at the age of 65. He made his final film appearance in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, where he reprised his role as Iceman.
Speaking to Vulture’s Rebecca Alter, Forte explained how thrilled the team behind MacGruber was when Kilmer agreed to appear in the film, particularly since Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in 1993’s Tombstone was one of Forte’s “favorite characters from movies of all time.” MacGruber, which was based on a Saturday Night Live sketch and directed by SNL’s Jorma Taccone, was released in 2010 and starred Forte and Kristen Wiig as well as Kilmer as the villain, Dieter Von Cunth.
Forte also detailed how quickly Kilmer put everyone at set on ease, going so far as to give the comedian the shirt off his back after he complimented it, taking it off and telling Forte, “This is yours now.”
The pair stayed in touch once filming wrapped, and during a dispute with his landlord, Kilmer asked Forte if he could stay at his place while he looked for somewhere else to live. While Forte was under the impression it would only be a short stay, Kilmer ended up living with him for two and a half months in a situation Forte compares to The Odd Couple.
In one story, Forte shared how he came home late at night to find all the lights off and Kilmer reading a book using the light from a miner’s headlamp, in preparation for his one-man play about Mark Twain. Forte said that it was “very special to get to see that from its early incubation period into what it grew to be.” Another time, Kilmer turned up to record 30 Rock commentary with Forte while dressed as Twain, complete with facial prosthetics, a mustache, and a wig; he’d just come back from walking around Santa Monica dressed as one of America’s greatest writers.
Forte also got Kilmer into The Amazing Race while they were living together, with Kilmer even managing to convince Forte that they should participate, only for their managers and agents to shoot them down. He describes never doing the show with Kilmer as the biggest regret of his career, although he states, “I think we would’ve gotten out very quickly, but it just would’ve been the experience of a lifetime.”
The piece is full of touching anecdotes about that strange period where Forte and Kilmer cohabitated, with Forte calling Kilmer “the most unique person” he’s ever met and “the most interesting person in the world.“
”Life is more vivid when you’re hanging out with Val,” Forte said, concluding that while he “didn’t know if I was going to get that lucky to get to work with him again. I settled for being his roommate.”
