By Kellie Freeze
For over two decades, Inside the Actors Studio, the venerable acting master class created by James Lipton, has welcomed actors, directors and writers to share the secrets of their craft. After Lipton’s September 2018 retirement, the series moved to Ovation, where now rotating guest hosts will interview Hollywood notables about their works and methods. The new season premiered Sunday, Oct. 13, with current Actors Studio co-president Alec Baldwin interviewing Henry Winkler.
When we talked to Winkler, the actor admitted that when he got the invitation from Ovation, “I thought, ‘See? You sit at the table long enough and all the chips come to you.’” He laughs, echoing a line from his 2018 Emmy acceptance speech after being awarded Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role of Gene Cousineau on Barry. “I thought it was swell.”
In his episode, Winkler is led by Baldwin down memory lane from his boyhood — where he struggled academically due to undiagnosed dyslexia — through his early TV appearances, including an overly earnest dinner guest on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, his breakout role as greaser Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on Happy Days and his career resurgence on the HBO comedy Barry.
As he reminisces, Winkler shares stories and anecdotes, but focuses his attention on explaining the skills that he’s developed throughout his career — particularly how he built confidence and an instinct for risk-taking when creating characters — in the hopes of inspiring the next generation of thespians. After all, Winkler points out that taking risks led to him being cast in his most iconic role. “They weren’t looking for me for Arthur Fonzarelli,” he says. “They were looking for a large Italian, and they got a short Jew. They don’t know what they’re looking for all the time. You have to show them, you have to tell them, ‘I’m who you’re looking for.’”
Winkler says the best part of his Inside the Actors Studio experience was sitting on the lip of the stage and fielding questions from the audience of young actors, directors and playwrights. “It’s one of my favorite things I’ve done in my entire career,” he shares. “I always wished somebody who had been through it would have talked to me and said, ‘It’s going to be OK.’”
Now that Winkler has been a guest, he says that if his schedule would allow, he’d love to return as a guest host. His wish list of interviewees includes “Olivia Colman, Helen Mirren and Judi Dench. And since you asked, I would like to interview a lot of musicians, because they’re also actors when they sing their songs. Ryan Gosling, I think Ryan Gosling is just great. And Brad Pitt, the evolution of Brad Pitt to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is just magnificent.”