Role Recall: Henry Winkler Looks Back on ‘Happy Days,’ ‘Royal Pains,’ ‘Childrens Hospital,’ and Other TV Career Highlights
He’s done it all, because he can do it all. As our walk down TV memory lane with Emmy-nominated legend Henry Winkler proves, there’s no TV role the Happy Days star can’t successfully tackle, from creating the iconic, shark-jumping Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli to portraying a dentist with a creepy bug fetish on The Practice to stealing scenes as the pastry-stealing attorney Barry Zuckerkorn on Arrested Development.
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In Yahoo TV’s latest Role Recall, Winkler, currently starring with William Shatner, George Foreman, and Terry Bradshaw in NBC’s must-see travel adventure reality series Better Late Than Never, talks about his first primetime gig (on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and the beginning of his decadeslong friendship (personal and professional) with Happy Days co-star Ron Howard. He also shares a secret about his seven-season run as administrator Sy Mittleman on Childrens Hospital. “Now here’s the truth, now that it’s over: I didn’t understand one joke,” Winkler says of the Adult Swim comedy.
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The actor, who will star with Bill Hader in the 2017 HBO comedy Barry, also promises that upcoming episodes of Better Late Than Never will continue to ratchet up the funny, as he and his famous new pals continue their journey across Asia. “As the executive producer, or one of them, I got to be in the editing room, and I literally watched it grow,” Winkler says. “And I thought to myself, ‘Hey, I wanna be with these guys,’ and I’m in it!”
Better Late Than Never airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.