Surprise! Will Forte and his fiancée Olivia Modling tied the knot over the summer.
According to PEOPLE, the couple got married on July 31 in New Mexico. While speaking with the publication for this week’s issue, Forte — who was promoting his upcoming Peacock series “MacGruber” — opened up about the surprise nuptials, calling the day of the wedding “a delightful day.”
Forte, 51, and Modling got engaged in April 2020, and welcomed their first child together — a baby girl named Zoe — in February. During the summer, Forte said the two “were in New Mexico” as he was there shooting “MacGruber,” which is based on his “Saturday Night Live” parody of the action series “MacGyver.” (The series will reportedly serve as a sequel to the 2010 film, “MacGruber.”)
Forte shared that he and Modling had been in “no rush” to get married, but would think about tying the knot “every once in a while.”
“We had gotten engaged right before the first Covid lockdown,” he explained. “And so when we were just starting to talk to planners, people were having to shut down their weddings. At the time, we said, ‘We’re in no rush. We can figure it out later.’ So then Covid goes by and we’re quarantining for a long time. And then the baby is this wonderful news. We find out we’re having a kid. And so we were in no rush, but every once in a while we would think about, ‘Let’s just do it.'”
As PEOPLE noted, “weeks” before the couple’s family were coming to visit them in New Mexico, they made a “very last minute” decision to begin planning their surprise wedding — even Forte’s parents had no idea!
“We realized, ‘Oh, all the people that we would want to be here are going to be here,'” Forte recalled. “Most of them, because a lot of my closest friends work on ‘MacGruber’ with me. They were already in Albuquerque, so we just decided very last minute, ‘Let’s just have this wedding, surprise my parents.’ They didn’t even know until they pulled into the parking lot.”
“We just had this really fun, delightful wedding, pretty small, in the back of Jorma Taccone’s house,” he added, referencing Taccone, who created the “MacGruber” sketch on “SNL.”
Forte said the wedding “was just a delightful day.” The actor added, “My parents were totally surprised. It was so stressful, the two weeks where we were planning. I can’t imagine having a year or more to stew over wedding plans.”
The “SNL” alum went on to gush about married life, noting that he finds it’s “fun and exciting” to refer to Modling as his “wife.”
“It’s fun to say, ‘Wife,'” Forte said. “I’ve never worn any jewelry in my life and it’s fun to wear a wedding ring. It already felt like we were married before. It doesn’t feel a lot different, but it’s still fun and exciting to say, ‘Wife.'”
“She’s great,” he added, praising Modling. “I needed to find somebody who was a very patient person and she’s the most patient, understanding woman in the world. I’m feeling very happy and very lucky these days.”
, Entertainment,International, ,