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Why This NCIS Star Questioned His Career After a Terrifying Accident

Why This NCIS Star Questioned His Career After a Terrifying Accident

 Movieguide® Contributor

NCIS’s Wilmer Valderrama, who plays Nicholas Torres on the show, recounts a terrifying plane incident in his new memoir, “An American Story: Everyone’s Invited.”

After the event, he questioned whether he wanted to pursue his career in Hollywood.

“A group of actors and insiders is flying back to Hollywood from New Orleans after the Super Bowl, but nothing is smooth about this flight,” Valderrama, 44, wrote. “A winter storm rages across the skies, and the mood on board is shaky.”

Valderrama had been traveling with his THAT 70S SHOW co-stars Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson and fellow actor Colin Hanks when the plan pitched horizontal and vertical directions.

“I’m feeling lightheaded,” he wrote. “It’s getting hard to breathe. Oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, and I wonder if they dropped because the turbulence shook them loose or if it’s something else.”

The pilot had “a full air force mask” on before they got their smaller masks. Kutcher and Valderrama shared a mask while Masterson had his own.

“We fumble with our masks. Something is definitely not right with this plane,” the ENCANTO star said. “Colin clutches the armrests of his seat with a death grip. Ashton’s jaw has dropped to his lap…Our plane is going down.”

Carbon monoxide had filled the cabin due to an oxygen valve that was stuck shut. At this point, the captain told them they were “a long way from home.”

Then Masterson said, “I have no feeling in my arm.”

“I’m struggling to imagine a best-case scenario if we crash high on a mountainside and they can’t find us. Ashton’s gonna wonder who to eat first. It’s probably gonna be me, because he loves Latin American food,” Valderrama joked.

Eventually, the plane landed.

“We let out a cheer, but it feels like a lifetime has just passed. It’s not a happy cheer,” Valderrama wrote in the book. “It’s a wobbly cheer, like we’re all trying to process what just happened.”

The incident jarred the actor and left him debating whether he wanted to continue in his career.

“What if my life had ended that day on the plane?” Valderrama said. “All of us are going to die someday, and we have to prepare for what’s next. But it’s also important to live here and now.”

So, Valderrama kept on living and acting. Movieguide® recently reported on Valderrama’s NCIS role:

Wilmer Valderrama has given some thought to how he wants his character, Special Agent Nick Torres, to leave NCIS when the time comes. 

“Like Denzel Washington in TRAINING DAY — just go out,” the actor said, referring to the 2001 movie where Washington’s character dies in a gunfight. 

“I think not being the bad guy [like Washington’s character was], of course I’d like to die as a good guy,” Valderrama explained. “But defending my family somehow, just in a storm of bullets, I just see a storm of bullets just washing over me, just dying heroically with violins in the background and the rain is pouring.”

For his co-star Kutcher, that event wasn’t the only time he experienced a scary plane incident. In 2009, his plane had to land suddenly when the engines caught fire.

He tweeted at the time, “My plane just had to do an emergency landing. Engine over heated. Fire engines everywhere good times,” later adding that he was “happy to be alive” and wanted to celebrate.


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