From the moment Henry Winkler arrived from Yale Drama School to Hollywood in 1973 it seemed he was charmed. Within a week of landing at LAX he booked a small role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. A week later he was hired to play Fonzie on Happy Days. The rest is television history. Winkler visits our PMC studios this week for my latest episode of my Deadline video series, The Actor’s Side where we cover the waterfront of his remarkable career including his latest Emmy nomination as acting teacher Gene Cousineau in HBO’s Barry, the dark hitman comedy from Bill Hader and Alec Berg that has received an overall 14 Emmy nominations in its long awaited return this season and actually is responsible for the first-ever Primetime Emmy of Winkler’s career when he took Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2018 for the show. He had been nominated many times before and even won a couple of Daytime Emmys for some childrens programs , but this was a BFD and the audience went crazy when he finally won. His Emmy history also includes three nominations in the 70’s as The Fonz for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, but as he explains the role started out to be a much smaller one, but grew to legendary heights once fans embraced the character. He would stay on it for 255 episodes, and since then has had a stellar career not just in front of the camera, but also behind it as a producer and director (MacGyver was among the shows he produced).
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Audiences also know him as Barry Zuckerkorn on the cult classic Arrested Development, countless animated shows as various voices, and a host of movies ranging from an early acclaimed Ron Howard comedy, Night Shift to Scream to The Waterboy and numerous Adam Sander films to most recently Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch. We talk about all of it including those early days, his connection to Steve McQueen’s famous motorcycle jump in The Great Escape, why Fonz only spent 17 seconds actually riding a motorcycle in 10 years on the show, the directors who mentored him, what he thinks when people call him a “legend”, and of course all things Barry including what we can expect from the currently shooting fourth season. Actually talking to Winkler is great fun because he pretty much has an amazing story about everything and everyone he has encountered. Don’t miss this one. Watch our conversation to get the ‘actor’s side’ of it all from Henry Winkler by clicking the link above.
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