Will Forte: ‘The Biggest Regret of My Whole Career’ Is Not Doing ‘The Amazing Race’ with Val Kilmer

Forte remembered almost joining the reality series with his late "MacGruber" co-star Kilmer.

“The Amazing Race” famously inspired Mike White to create “The White Lotus” after appearing on the reality series (he also was in “Survivor”), but it turns out that White wasn’t the only famous filmmaker who was a fan-turned-contestant. Will Forte revealed to Vulture that he and his “MacGruber” co-star, late actor Val Kilmer, almost joined “The Amazing Race” after both binging the series.

Forte and Kilmer co-starred in 2010 “SNL” spinoff spoof film “MacGruber,” and later lived together in 2011. During their cohabitation, Forte got Kilmer into watching “The Amazing Race.” Kilmer died at age 65 in 2025 after battling throat cancer for more than a decade, and Forte now says that not competing in “The Amazing Race” with him is his “biggest regret.”

“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.’ So he sat down and started watching it and he got really into it,” Forte told said in a tribute to the actor. “Then 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.”‘ And I’m like, ‘I’m so fully in.’ We got really excited about it and then we called our respective agents and managers and they were like, ‘There’s no way you guys are doing that.’ 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.”

Kilmer previously shared his “love” for Forte in 2012, when he said on Twitter that living with Forte was a hilarious experience. “I love Will Forte. He let me live in his spare room while I was finding a new home last year,” Kilmer wrote. “God he’s funny.”