Val Kilmer<\/a> for “getting [him] through” making ‘Willow’.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Warwick Davis loved working with Val Kilmer<\/p>\n
The 55-year-old actor played the titular role in the 1988 fantasy film and he told how his co-star – who died of pneumonia last month aged 65 – was the “leader of the army” among the cast, helping to raise morale when the shoot got tough.<\/p>\n
Warwick told Entertainment Weekly: “He’s really the reason I got through the making of the film Willow.<\/p>\n
“Because if ever I was tired, exhausted, fed up, cold, he’d say, ‘Come on, keep going!’ And he’d be the kind of leader of the army, keeping us going. He was a beautiful man.”<\/p>\n
Warwick is keen to tell as many people as possible his good memories of the ‘Top Gun’ actor.<\/p>\n
\nHe said: “I always like to tell the world how great he was, because I often think the media gave the wrong impression of who he was as a person. He was a very warm, generous, kind-hearted person.”<\/p>\n
\nWarwick reprised his role in a 2022 Disney+ series and it had hoped that Val – who was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 – would return as knight Madmartigan but he ultimately wasn’t able to be involved due to his poor health.<\/p>\n
\nShowrunner Jonathan Kasdan previously told Entertainment Weekly: “We started building out the first season with the intent of having him appear.<\/p>\n
\n“[It wasn’t clear we couldn’t get him] until pretty late in the process, frankly.”<\/p>\n
\nThe show was cancelled after a single season.<\/p>\n
\nWarwick also admitted he was disappointed Val couldn’t be involved with the series because he had been such a great source of support when they worked on the original ‘Willow’.<\/p>\n
\nHe told The Guardian newspaper: “Not a day went by while we were filming where I didn\u2019t think about him. What a cool guy he was. <\/p>\n
\n“When you\u2019re 17 on a huge film like that, playing the title character, there\u2019s a lot of pressure, physically and mentally, to do a good job. Val was always there with a joke. Kind of picking my spirits up, saying, \u2018Come on, you can do this\u2019, you know, physically geeing me on.<\/p>\n
\n“I owe him a big debt of gratitude for that.”<\/p>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"22 May 2025 Warwick Davis has praised the late Val Kilmer for “getting [him] through” making ‘Willow’. Warwick Davis loved working with Val Kilmer The 55-year-old actor played the titular role in the 1988 fantasy film and he told how his co-star – who died of pneumonia last month aged 65 – was the “leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":169974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7287,9875],"class_list":{"0":"post-169973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-val-kilmer","9":"tag-warwick-davis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}