Henry Winkler says ‘Happy Days’ table reads were ‘humiliating’ prior to his dyslexia diagnosis

By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN

Henry Winkler is revealing how a dyslexia diagnosis affected his experience playing Fonzie on the 1970s hit TV show “Happy Days.”

In his upcoming memoir “Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond,” Winkler, now 77, reveals that he didn’t find out that he was “severely dyslexic” until the age of 35, according an excerpt published Wednesday by People. For years, he writes, he struggled to do basic math, spell and read.

“Even in the midst of Happy Days, at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, inadequate,” he writes, adding that at every table read, “I would lose my place, or stumble. I would leave a word out, a line out.”

The “Barry” star continued to share that he felt as though he was “constantly failing to give the right cue line, which would then screw up the joke for the person doing the scene with me. Or I would be staring at a word, like ‘invincible,’ and have no idea on earth how to pronounce it or even sound it out.”

“Meanwhile, the other actors would be waiting, staring at me: it was humiliating and shameful,” Winkler writes, adding, “Everybody in the cast was warm and supportive, but I constantly felt I was letting them down.”

Once Winkler was eventually diagnosed, he writes that he was “so f— angry” because he realized his dyslexia was genetic. “It wasn’t a way I decided to be.”

Despite all of the “misery” and “humiliation” the Emmy-winner describes feeling, he candidly shared that he was able to shake off the anger and fight through it.

Winkler played Arthur ‘Fonzie’ Fonzarelli, also known as “the Fonz,” on “Happy Days” from 1974 to 1984 alongside Ron Howard and Scott Baio, among others.

He was nominated for three Emmys for his performance, but nabbed his first Emmy win in 2018 for his performance as acting coach Gene Cousineau on the HBO dramedy “Barry.” (CNN and HBO are both part of the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.)

“Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond,” out on October 31, is billed as a “deeply thoughtful memoir of the lifelong effects of stardom and the struggle to become whole,” according to an official synopsis.

The-CNN-Wire
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