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Henry Winkler received some sound advice on his first day on the Happy Days set.
The actor, who played Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on the long-running ABC comedy series, recently told Hoda Kotb’sJoy 101 that he became frustrated and started to doubt himself during his first day on set more than 50 years ago, and that his young co-star Ron Howard stepped in to calm him down and give him advice.
Winkler, who studied at the Yale School of Drama before landing the role on the ‘70s sitcom, told Kotb he was having trouble with one of his lines and began to have a bit of a meltdown.
“So it's the first day,” Winkler, 80, shared. “First, I'm reading—now you remember I'm a trained actor— and I'm reading the script, and I can't make the joke work. And I start hitting the script. ‘I can't do this. What is this?’”
“And I'm twenty-seven, Ron Howard is eighteen,” Winkler continued. “He puts his arm around me, walks me to the back of soundstage 24 on Paramount Lot and says, ‘You know they're working as hard as they can. Let's not hit our script.’“
Winkler recalled sheepishly telling his co-star, “Ron, I’ll never hit my script as long as I live.”
Although Howard was much younger than Winkler, he had years of television experience as a child actor on The Andy Griffith Show, The Smith Family and more. His calm attitude helped guide Winkler through the early days of his very first TV show.
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Despite having more TV experience than Winkler, Howard has said that he “looked up to him” when they first met on the Happy Days set.
"Henry's a few years older than I am.,” Howard said in 2025, per People magazine. "Yale educated, and he looked at acting in a way that was — it wasn't Hollywood. It was a little more intellectual. It was theater-based, and that was new to me. But more than anything, we just got along beautifully and worked well together.”
The two formed a bond that is still strong more than five decades later.
"I met him when he was 18, and I was 27," Winkler recently said on The Rich Eisen Show. "We were touched by the universe. There was a string between us. I didn't have to tell him what I was going to do. He didn't tell me what he was going to do. We just were in the same space at the same moment. It's rare."
