Will Forte is revealing that his “biggest regret” is not going on a reality television show with the late Val Kilmer.
In a first-person essay for Vulture, the Saturday Night Live alum looked back at his friendship with Kilmer, who died of pneumonia on Tuesday at the age of 65, his daughter announced. The two actors grew close while working together on the 2010 movie MacGruber, which was based on Forte’s recurring SNL sketch of the same name.
In the years that followed, Forte and Kilmer stayed in contact, and at one point, he recalled The Doors actor asking to stay with him while he “was having a dispute with his landlord” in Malibu. During their time living together for two and a half months, Forte shared that he actually introduced Kilmer to reality television.
“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.’ I said, ‘It’s pretty good. You should sit down and watch it. Give it a try before you shit on it,’” The Last Man on Earth actor recalled. “So he sat down and he started watching it, and he got really into it.”
That’s when an idea popped in Kilmer’s head.
“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.’ I’m like, ‘I am so fully in,’” Forte said, adding that they both “got really excited about it.”
However, once they told their respective agents and managers about their plans to go on The Amazing Race, they didn’t get the reaction they were hoping for.
“They were like, ‘There’s no way you guys are doing that,’” Forte recounted. “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.”
The Amazing Race is a long-running reality competition series, which sees multiple teams embark on a race around the world that rewards $1 million to the first team to reach the final destination.