Disillusioned at the thought of taking down another 'mark,' depressed, low-level hit man Barry Berkman seeks a way out. When the Midwesterner reluctantly travels to Los Angeles to execute a hit on an actor who is bedding a mobster's wife, little does Barry know that the City of Angels may be his sanctuary. He follows his target into acting class and ends up instantly drawn to the community of eager hopefuls, especially dedicated student Sally, who becomes the object of his affection. While Barry wants to start a new life as an actor, his handler, Fuches, has other ideas, and the hit man's criminal past won't let him walk away so easily.
Meeting Henry Winkler for the first time, Bill Hader remembers, was like coming face to face with Mickey Mouse or Big Bird, mythical characters from the earliest memories of his childhood.Casting his HBO series, “Barry,” Hader had asked the network if Winkler might be available for the part of a vain acting teacher. “Actually, he’s coming in to read,” they told him. And soon afterward, Winkler, the man Hader spent hours watching on “Happy Days” as a kid, arrived and picked up a script, and all Hader could do was think, “Oh, my God.
I’m acting with Henry Winkler.”“We were all scared and nervous in the room,” Hader says, between bites of a lunch salad as Winkler listens, clearly enjoying the story. “Terrified, really. As kids, we all wanted to be Fonzie. Then later, I remember staying up and watching when I wasn’t supposed to and seeing Henry and thinking, ‘Wait. That’s the guy who plays Fonzie?
Oh, so that’s what an actor does?’ Do you know what I mean? That’s the thing that broke it for me.”Flash-forward to the Emmys last September. “Barry,” a dark comedy about a hit man desperate to change and leave his profession, has been nominated for 13 trophies. The night’s first award goes to Winkler, who exhales deeply, wraps Hader in a bear hug and kisses the show’s co-creator Alec Berg, before bounding to the stage.
Later, Hader wins for his lead turn, an outcome he didn’t expect and can only process by saying, “Wow.” (“We were still celebrating Henry,” Hader says. “I thought Donald Glover or Ted Danson would win.”).
Reflecting on that evening as well as their careers, Winkler, 73, offers a word he believes links him and Hader. Tenacity.“We know what we want and never let it go,” Winkler says.After his 11-season run on “Happy Days” ended in 1984, Winkler says he couldn’t get a decent acting job for seven years. (“No one would hire me,” he says. “People would say, ‘Oh, he is so talented – and funny! But he’s the Fonz.’ ”)Hader too struggled to reinvent himself after deciding to leave “Saturday Night Live” in 2013 after eight years of expert mimicry and memorable characters. That these two talented actors found each other and wound up collaborating is an example of what Winkler calls life’s circles. He finds them everywhere.
Winkler’s son, Max, went to film school at USC with Hiro Murai, the celebrated director who has helmed several “Barry” episodes. “Barry” is filmed on the same Sony Studios sound stage as “Happy Days,” which Winkler had never told Hader until just before he delivered his last line of this second season.“You hang around long enough, there are a lot of circles,” Winkler says. (One more Winkler likes to note: He was 27 when he got the role of the Fonz and 72 when he won the Emmy. “I’ve flipped the numbers, and I am closer to the actor that I thought about being when I was 27.”)Winkler and Hader have become friends as well as collaborators, the tone being set from the moment of their first meeting. Hader and Berg had initially written acting teacher Gene Cousineau as an arch, John Barrymore type — a fallen star, a shameless ham (he wore a cape). Winkler brought a vulnerability to his reading, turning the character from a self-absorbed monster into a failed actor still out there trying to make it. When he left, Hader turned to Berg and said, “He just made the part better.” And then they looked at other characters.
Had they made them too big as well?“We didn’t know the tone of the show until Henry read,” Hader says.“I’m glad I’m here having lunch with you and hearing this,” Winkler says, his comic timing forever perfect. “Barry’s” second season burrows into the central question of the series and, really, of life itself: Can people transform their natures or are they born a certain way, fated to remain the same until death?Hader’s Barry wants to stop killing. He longs to believe that he is not a murderer, that circumstances have forced him to do terrible things.
One of the father figures in his life, Cousineau, tells him he can change. The other father figure, Stephen Root’s manipulative handler Monroe Fuches, advises Barry to keep killing.
It’s who he is. It’s what he does best.The season’s battle between determinism and free will is laid bare during a fourth episode scene between Hader and Winkler in which Barry confides in Cousineau, confessing something horrible he did as a Marine in Afghanistan. Hader and Berg were rewriting the dialogue right up until they filmed it because if it didn’t work, Hader says, the “season would have been in trouble.” And then Hader and Winkler kept rehearsing it and refining it, ultimately landing in a gut-wrenching place that expresses cautious hope for Barry’s humanity.“We’re comfortable with each other and we’re friends, so it’s nice when you’re trying to figure out a thing together and you feel like, ‘Oh, I can just do that and Henry will know what to do,’ ” Hader says.“That is the truth,” Winkler adds.
What Channel Is Better Late Than Never On
“We have gotten to a place that, wherever one of us is, the other is there.”Another thing that hasn’t changed since the moment they met is the joy Winkler derives from making Hader laugh. “He is the best audience,” Winkler says. “To make him dissolve into laughter is one of the great compliments ever.”.
When Hader relates how meditation helped him ease his anxiety during his later years on “Saturday Night Live,” Winkler relates: “I get nervous when I’m driving to work and I’m thinking, ‘Do I know what I’m doing? Do I know how to do this?’ And once I arrive on set, I have a breakfast burrito — which is one of the reasons I became an actor — Hader is losing it and now I’m thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I now look heavy.’ And then I just go to work and somehow it turns out OK.”Small wonder then that when Hader is asked if Winkler’s character will return for the show’s third season (“That’s a great question can we both ask that,” Winkler says, leaning forward with a flourish), Hader emphatically answers, “Yes!
There’s no way Henry’s not going to be back. Are you kidding me?”Well Hader and Berg have shown a willingness to follow the story where it leads on “Barry” — even if that results in characters dying, which is a natural development in a series centered on a hit man. “Don’t you think that I don’t think about that every minute?” Winkler says, his eyes widening.“It’s funny,” Hader says. “People love Henry so much. When I’m out on the street, people approach me and say, ‘Oh, my God, “Barry!” What’s it like to work with Henry Winkler?’ What would I say to those people if we killed him off? I don’t think people would find any kind of apology acceptable.”Winkler smiles. “You know when you’re walking through an airport and people talk to you about what you’re doing right now instead of what you’ve done in the past?” he says.
“That’s when you know you’re in it to win it. Men my age are waiting for the phone to ring — or putting the phone away.
And here we are. It’s thrilling.”Twitter.
Published 10:05 AM EDT Mar 29, 2019LOS ANGELES – These are happy days for Henry Winkler.The Yale Drama School graduate, who rocketed to fame in the ‘70s as sitcom biker Arthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli, now – in his 70s – revels in his stature as an in-demand actor, whose portrayal of a narcissistic acting coach in HBO’s “Barry” earned him his first primetime Emmy.“At 27, I got the Fonz. At 72, I got Gene Cousineau,” he says, relaxing in the living room of his well-appointed Brentwood home. 'Pretty amazing!'
More than four decades after turning “Aaayyy!” into an analog-era viral meme, Winkler is enjoying a rich third act playing quirky, memorable characters on “Arrested Development,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Children’s Hospital,” “Royal Pains” and “Barry,” Bill Hader’s darkly comedic story of a hitman-turned-thespian that returns for Season 2 Sunday (10 EDT/PDT).“I’m not good at playing just the straight leading guy. (My) characters all seem a little idiosyncratic,” he says, recalling a “Parks and Recreation” scene where his Dr. Saperstein mistakenly sees an extra baby when looking at Leslie Knope’s ultrasound.
“Of course, it was (cream) cheese from my lunch.' More: Review: Bill Hader makes the wild and weird 'Barry' wonderfulMore: Emmys 2018: 5 moments you missed, from the first award for 'The Fonz' to a surprise proposal. Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAYDespite the credits and fame, Winkler says he had to audition for Gene, who becomes Barry’s mentor after the killer crashes his class on assignment and falls in love with acting.' Saturday Night Live' alum Hader, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of Barry, loved Winkler's interpretation.“Initially, (Gene) was written as much more of an arch guy, a sketchy character. (But) in the back of my head, I always thought Henry might be a good choice,” says Hader, who also writes, directs and produces the series. “He was phenomenal.”More: Bill Hader's 'Barry' is a hitman who really wants to act. Isabella Vosmikova, HBOHader and co-creator Alec Berg saw Winkler as a Gene variation.
'He’s such a nice, warm person that having him play such a narcissistic (jerk) is a funny idea.”Winkler, 73, who also appears in director Wes Anderson's next film, 'The French Dispatch,' realizes his good fortune in a field where many older actors have gone from “waiting for the phone to ring (to putting) the phone in the closet.” But he understands the lack of job security in entertainment, finding himself typecast in the mid-1980s after an 11-season run as the beloved bad boy on ABC's “Happy Days.”“I literally could not get hired as an actor. People would say, ‘Oh, he is so talented – and funny!
But he’s The Fonz,’” he says.By then married and raising three young children (he and wife Stacey now have five grandchildren), Winkler couldn’t afford to wait, so he moved behind the camera for his second act, directing TV shows (“Dave’s World,” “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) and producing “The Sure Thing,” a 1985 John Cusack film; paranormal documentary series “Sightings”; and “MacGyver,” both the ‘80s original and the CBS reboot (“I was there yesterday, editing.”).More: For 10 years, The Bronze Fonz has been a favorite for visitors to Milwaukee. Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAYThe evaporation of acting roles didn’t crush Winkler, who had dreamed of acting since childhood despite the reservations of his parents, Jewish emigres from Nazi Germany who wanted him to run the family wood business.“But the only wood I was interested in was Hollywood. Until I was a star, they were very upset,” Winkler says, recalling a fan letter that he recognized from his mother’s handwriting.After 'Happy Days,' he avoided the letdown that afflicts others, and credits an unlikely source, dyslexia, a learning disability he didn’t realize he had until his early 30s.“There is an emotional component to being dyslexic where your self-image is damaged,” says Winkler, who’s co-written a book series about schoolboy Hank Zipzer, who has the condition.
Despite all the 'Happy Days'-era acclaim, he thought, 'That couldn’t be me. And I think that helped me stay grounded.”. APThe pipeline opened up in the past decade, leading to Gene, a good teacher on the rare occasion when he can get over himself. Winkler embraces the character's self-regard: “There is Stanislavski. There is The Actor’s Studio. Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAYWinkler has a “very small bucket list” – a return to Broadway, a Tony Award – and appreciates his first Emmy win after six nominations dating back to 1976.But the Emmy takes a back seat to an even bigger honor, as Winkler shows off a photo of his 7-year-old grandson dressed as a leather-jacketed biker.“It was all on his own.
He went for Halloween as The Fonz, as Papa,” the boy’s name for him, Winkler says. “I couldn’t believe it. It was one of the greatest compliments of my life.”.
Per page Title:Year:Credit:User score:40Apr 14, 2017Cast4.475Feb 10, 2016Ed Koch5.2tbdJun 5, 2015Stanley Warnertbd40Oct 12, 2012Marty / Marty / Marty / Marty / Marty Streb / Marty StrebtbdtbdApr 25, 2008Happy Herb9.2tbdOct 12, 2007Sytbd45Jun 23, 2006Ted / Ted6.737Dec 2, 2005Johnny Bernsteintbd13Jan 21, 2000Chef Ray5.441Nov 6, 1998Coach Klein / Coach Kleintbd76Mar 1, 1985Executive Producertbd62Jul 30, 1982Chuck Lumleytbd35Nov 17, 1977Jack Dunnetbd53May 1, 1974Butchey Weinsteintbd.