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On a recent episode of The Seth Meyers Podcast, a Saturday Night Live writer mentioned a cameo that Tom Cruise missed on a popular reality show. Cruise and Val Kilmer rose to fame in the 1980s and starred as rivals in the 1986 hit Top Gun. They reunited in the 2022 sequel, where Val’s character had throat cancer, just like Val Kilmer in real life.
Val passed away in 2025, so in the recent episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, released on April 15, Seth Meyers, the former writer and cast member of Saturday Night Live, gathered his fellow cast members and makers for a tribute to Val.
Here, they talked about some of the anecdotes Val left behind and even addressed a Saturday Night Live episode Val appeared on in December 2000. Seth played a voice note of Michael Schur, the writer who worked on Saturday Night Live during the time Val came on it. He revealed that a Top Gun theme skit with a Tom Cruise cameo almost happened. But it didn't happen because there were execution errors.
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Why did Tom Cruise's cameo not happen during Val Kilmer's Saturday Night Live appearance?
In the Saturday Night Live sketch, where Val participated in the 2000s, he covered his role of the Iceman on a Delta flight. He kept putting in his lines from the movie into the sketch, which included,
"Listen to me, you're out of line! Your ego's writing checks your body can't cash and that makes you dangerous!"
During th podcast, Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live director Jorma Taccone, writer Will Forte, and writer John Solomon reminisced Val's time on the show and revealed that Tom Cruise was backstage when Val was doing the said sketch.
Some of the other cast members on the sketch were Chris Parnell, Will Ferrell, and Ana Gasteyer. Michael Schur, the writer, revealed that he was nearby while Tom Cruise was watching these actors perform, just eight feet away from them.
This was where Saturday Night Live producer Marci Klein walked upto Michael and asked him if would be a good idea to let Tom walk- in for a cameo. Michael thought it was a great idea, and even came up with a line and place to insert Tom.
He strategised to put Tom in towards the end of the sketch, where he would appear in Iceman's cockpit and say:
"Hey Iceman, let's get you out of here, bud."
Marci conveyed the same to Tom, and Michel saw him nodding at the idea, which made him look like he was convinced about walking on. However, it didn't happen because they missed their window to get Tom on at the right place and the right time of the sketch. Reflecting on the moments after the sketch, Michael said,
"The sketch ended and the applause was cued and Val got whisked away to run to change. We missed it by like eight seconds."
He explained the gravity of the loss that if Tom Cruise's walk on went successfully, it would have had 30 Rock "crumbled to the ground". While the audiences didn't get to see this coveted cameo, Tom and Val's reunion on the sets of Top Gun: Maverick, was equally satisfactory.
Saturday Night Live airs every Saturday at 11:30 pm ET on NBC.
