3 of Val Kilmer’s TV Roles That Shouldn’t Be Forgotten

Val Kilmer, who tragically passed away at 65 on Tuesday, was one of Hollywood’s most famous faces.

With plenty of iconic roles like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, Heat, and more, he left behind a major legacy on the big screen.

However, some of his most memorable moments actually came on the small screen. Here’s three of Kilmer’s best roles on TV.

Entourage

The eight-season long HBO comedy had its best cameo all the way at the beginning, when Kilmer pops up in an early season one episode. Kilmer plays “The Sherpa,” a drug dealer with a weed farm known as “the field of f–king dreams.” Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) and his friends are befuddled watching The Sherpa take a 25-second-long bong rip before he busts into a monologue that sounds exactly like every stoner rant about the meaning of life turned up to a million.

Psych

Throughout Psych’s eight seasons of sleuthing, characters would regularly reference a detective character named Dobson, who was always just off-screen and never actually seen but frequently admired by every character on the series. It became one of the series’ longest-running bits that audiences never saw Dobson’s face. In the series finale, protagonist Shawn Spencer leaves goodbye video messages to all of his friends, including Dobson. The camera turns, and it’s Kilmer—who is very confused as to why a man he’s never met is leaving him a goodbye message.

The Spoils of Babylon

This little-seen IFC comedy mini-series was a parody of the “limited TV event” genre of series, like the kind you’d see on PBS’s Masterpiece, that were so frequent in the 70s and 80s. The series shows clips from the in-universe miniseries, also called The Spoils of Babylon, and then “behind-the-scenes” clips of the series’ star (Will Ferrell) explaining the filming difficulties on the fictional show. Kilmer appears as actor Bobcat Maccaullie, who plays US Army General Cauliffe. If you’ve ever wanted to see Kilmer bounce off comedy legends like Ferrell, David Spade, Kristen Wiig, and more, don’t hesitate to track this series down.