Hanks recalls set antics with Scolari on ‘Bosom Buddies’

Longtime collaborators Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari charmed audiences with their improv comedy skills while starring in the ’80s sitcom “Bosom Buddies.”

But behind the scenes of the buddy comedy, the actors’ tendency to go off script wasn’t always appreciated by the production team, according to Hanks, who fondly remembered “screwing around” with his late co-star while appearing on Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“We had to stay on the set and say every line over and over and over again, so we started … monkeying around with the script and playing around with props and whatnot, and the directors were up in a booth,” Hanks told Kimmel.

“We’d always hear on the on the studio talkback, ‘Hey, guys? … Are you going to say that?’ ‘We might!’ ‘But it’s not in the script.’ ‘Yeah, but … if it works, it works, right?’ … ‘Can you give us a moment?’ ‘Yeah, sure. Go ahead.’ And then we’d come up with something else. And then they’d come back again and say, ‘Wait, wait, wait. We just figured out the one thing you’re gonna do. Are you gonna do that, too?’ ‘We might!’”

The Oscar winner spent nearly half of his interview with Kimmel reminiscing about his friendship with Scolari, who died last month at age 66 after a two-year battle with cancer.

In addition to acting opposite Hanks in “Bosom Buddies,” Scolari also starred in Hanks’ films “That Thing You Do!” (1996) and “The Polar Express” (2004).

“God bless him. I’ll miss him every day,” Hanks said of Scolari. “He had the body of a gymnast — and I mean like a professional Cirque du Soleil gymnast. He could do the iron triangle and stuff like that. He was a juggler.”