‘That ’70s Show’ stars Topher Grace and Wilmer Valderrama reflect on brotherly bond

Haaaaaaaangin’ out. Innnnnnnn real life.

In a much-welcome reunion, Topher Grace joined his old That ’70s Show alum Wilmer Valderrama during a recent episode of Dos Amigos, Valderrama’s new(ish) podcast he cohosts with Ugly Betty and Six Feet Under star Freddy Rodriguez.

A recurring theme of the episode was just how young and inexperienced Grace and Valderrama were when they were cast as Eric Forman and Fez in the teen comedy — especially Grace, who didn’t even know what a headshot was and “used a picture of me and my friends at Six Flags in the parking lot.”

What’s so charming to hear is how the two industry noobs really leaned on one another in those early days.

“You and I had this incredible connection from day one,” Grace said to Valderrama. “[We] really became best friends right off the bat. Then I would come over to his folks’ house and hang out a lot with your sisters.”

“I lived with my family,” Valderrama explained. “My mom was there, my dad is there, my mom is cooking the soups…”

Grace explained that he was extremely shy at the time, had only lived a “myopic” Connecticut prep school experience, and simply hadn’t met many people with other backgrounds — and that meeting Valderrama’s family was “incredible.”

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” he added.

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“Sometimes I’d sleep over at Wilmer’s house because we were teenagers…. Especially going through this thing where it’s scary and you’re getting famous and you don’t understand what’s happening in your life, but then to have such a good friend and to also have an eye-opening experience,” Grace continued.

“It was [life-changing] for me too, you have to understand, because I had only been [in America] a couple years,” Valderrama, who lived in Venezuela from the age of 3 to 13, added. “Meeting someone like him… By the way, his family also took me in the same way — every time I saw his dad, I was like, ‘Hey, dad.'”

“He slept in my bunk bed,” Grace reported. “I still had my childhood bunk bed.”

“I went over to Connecticut. We took the train over together and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s like in the movies,” Valderrama said about his experiences in the Constitution State, which certainly has its pockets of affluence.

“That’s what he said,” Grace remembered. “We went for a walk with my dad through the woods… He kept saying, ‘This is a set.’ And my dad was like, ‘What is this kid talking about? These are the woods.'”

For more from Topher’s appearance on Dos Amigos, here’s the full one-hour episode: