Even though Henry Winkler recalled his struggles with the “Happy Days” scripts as humiliating and shameful, he noted in the “Being Henry” excerpt that his fellow cast members were warm and supportive.
Winkler wrote that one way he tried to alleviate the burden on the cast was to get the script material as early as possible, but then that placed the burden on the series’ creative team. “I had to ask for my scripts really early, so I could read them over and over again — which put extra pressure on the writers, who were already under the gun every week, having to get 24 scripts ready in rapid succession,” Winkler recalled in his memoir.
When Winkler finally learned that he was dyslexic, the actor admitted that he wasn’t relieved to find out what was hampering his life, but upset. “When I found out that I had something with a name, I was so f*****g angry. All the misery I’d gone through had been for nothing,” Winkler wrote. “All the yelling, all the humiliation, all the screaming arguments in my house as I was growing up — for nothing … It was genetic! It wasn’t a way I decided to be! And then I went from feeling this massive anger to fighting through it.”
The actor played Fonzie on all 11 seasons of “Happy Days,” which ran on ABC-TV from 1974 to 1984. Winkler’s memoir, “Being Henry” (Celadon Books), will be released on October 31.
