Add Page Six on Google Henry Winkler revealed that he was doing “what [he] thought was [his] job” when he was infamously fired from the Tom Hanks vehicle “Turner & Hooch.”
Winkler had been hired to direct the 1989 comedy by studio exec Jeffrey Katzenberg, he said in a new interview on “In Depth With Graham Bensinger.”
“I now meet the puppies, and I meet with Tom [Hanks]” Winkler said of the dog- and cop-themed movie.
“I, at that time being insecure, I talked too much and I gave them direction,” Winkler added. “I [did] what I thought was my job, and I wanted to do it over again; and apparently that pissed them off.”
While the “Barry” star, now 80, confessed to feeling he wasn’t actually “suited” to direct the screwball comedy, he also admitted to being “devastated” when he was fired after “13 days of filming,” presumably due to tension between himself and the movie’s star.
“I’m called into Jeff Katzenberg’s office and he said, ‘It’s not in the dailies,'” the “Arrested Development” alum recalled.
“I then go to the set. I get my things. I drive home. I’m fired as a director.”
Winkler added that he didn’t “handle it well” at the time.
Elsewhere in the interview, Winkler confirmed that before he was fired, the “Saving Private Ryan” star had gifted him a signed model plane. “While we were having meetings, he built a plastic Piper Cub or something like that,” he divulged.
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But the “Turner & Hooch” incident seemed to have cooled the relationship, with Winkler musing on their shared screen time on a beloved sitcom years prior to the incident.
He noted that “before he was a movie star,” Hanks — now a 70-year-old Oscar winner — “was a guest star on ‘Happy Days'” in 1982. Winkler became a household name for his role as “the Fonz” on the show.
“We did a retrospective of ‘Happy Days,’ and we wanted 60 seconds of Tom Hanks in his episode,” Winkler said, adding that they “did not get permission for that.”
Winkler told Besinger that he’s “still working on” his “perspective” about their current dynamic. When questioned if the relationship would ever “repair itself,” the actor said simply, “Sure.”
A rep for the “Cast Away” actor did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment on Wednesday afternoon.
But back in 2020, Winkler denied ever having had a rift with the “Forrest Gump” actor. “I don’t have a feud with Tom Hanks,” he told the outlet at the time, via Vanity Fair.
“What everybody says and what is true are two different things.”
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