Wilmer Valderrama Explains How His 'That '70s Show' Character Kicked Off His Fitness Journey

Wilmer Valderrama will perhaps always be best known for playing Fez on That '70s Show, but the character wasn't exactly known for his athletic prowess. So as the 44-year-old was beginning to contemplate his future beyond the long running Fox sitcom, he realized he would need to break out of the mold, which inadvertently led him to start his fitness journey.

During a Friday appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, per Decider, Valderrama was shown a clip of himself doing pushups, which led the host to ask him when he started working out.

The actor, who currently stars on NCIS, recalled "a very specific moment in his career" that he evidently reached a crossroads with his physique. “Really?" Barrymore asked. "I’m so interested because I’m waiting for the day that I wake up and I’m like, ‘I am going to work out today.’ It happens occasionally but my consistency sucks.”

While Valderrama admitted that Fez was a "defining moment" in his career, he knew that one day he'd have to leave the character in his rearview.

“I knew that I had to have a life after That ‘70s Show. I knew that I had to figure out what my next chapter was gonna be as an actor," he explained. "And in order to do that at a time where television and film could be very stereotypical and if you play that character, that’s the only thing you play, I knew that I had to transform and put myself into a place where I look, or at least have the presence, of somebody that can play something else."

When Valderrama made the decision to get fit, he said that a good friend who was also an inspirational speaker, told him: "Hey, man. I got a gym in my garage. Let’s get Fez buff."

"He kind of put me through this transformative process where I was really working out for the next chapter of my career," he added. "So when I changed my body, something else happened. It untapped a million possibilities of the, ‘Why not me?'"

Why not him? Interestingly enough, in addition to playing NCIS Special Agent Nick Torres in the military police procedural franchise since 2016, Valderrama recently reprised the role of Fez in the Netflix revival That '90s Show. And after all these years later, sure enough, Fez did indeed get buff.