Val Kilmer ‘Refused to Do’ an Extreme Joke in MacGruber Involving His Character’s Penis

• While Val Kilmer agreed to play a villain in 2010’s action comedy spoof MacGruber, the actor drew the line at a joke that would have involved his character’s penis getting cut off
• Director Jorma Taccone recalled on the April 15 episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast that Kilmer “refused to do” the bit as he, Meyers, Will Forte and writer John Solomon discussed working with the late actor
• Kilmer died at 65 on April 1 from pneumonia

Val Kilmer was game to play a cartoony villain in Will Forte’s 2010 comedy MacGruber, but the late actor wasn’t up for performing one of the script’s raunchier jokes.

On the Tuesday, April 15 episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast, director Jorma Taccone — who directed Forte, 54, and Kilmer in the movie — recalled that Kilmer turned down an extreme bit involving his character’s penis.

“I will say this, though. He did do the movie. There was one joke, though, that he refused to do, which was that we did want to cut his penis off and shove it in his mouth,” Taccone, 48, recalled of Kilmer, who played villain Dieter Von Cunth in the comedy. “That was the the one joke that he he did not want to do.”

While the NSFW joke did not make it into the movie, a trailer for MacGruber shows Forte’s title character threatening Von Cunth with that exact action.

“I think now it’s especially a good decision on his part,” Late Night host Meyers, 51, remarked of Kilmer’s stance at the time. “I think now it’s especially a good decision on his part. I think it would be even harder to talk about him now had you guys made this poor person do this.”

Kilmer died of pneumonia on April 1. He was 65 years old. The actor rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s by starring in blockbusters like Top Gun and Batman Forever.

Comedians Forte, Taccone and their cowriter John Solomon said on the podcast that they felt surprised Kilmer even wanted to take part in MacGruber, which was based on Forte’s recurring Saturday Night Live sketch of the same name.

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Elsewhere during the conversation, Taccone recalled that Kilmer only read MacGruber‘s script for the first time when he arrived to perform at a table read with the movie’s cast and crew and that the actor “admitted to us afterwards that he read it cold.” “And he nailed it,” Taccone said. “Just absolutely nailed the part.”

“For people who don’t know the process, we went into the table read not having the role cast. He was just coming to the table read as a favor, like, not even to any of — I don’t know who he was doing the favor for because none of us knew him,” Forte recalled. “So we were so excited to have him at this table read.”

Forte, who formed a close friendship with Kilmer on MacGruber‘s set and in years afterward, wrote a first-person essay for Vulture on Friday, April 4 in which he described Kilmer as “just the most unique person I’ve ever met.”