Henry Winkler reflects on decades-long Tom Hanks rift

Henry Winkler is once again revisiting his decades-long tension with Tom Hanks, this time wondering aloud whether it can ever be fully mended.

Speaking on In Depth With Graham Bensinger, Winkler recalled being fired 13 days into directing the 1989 comedy Turner & Hooch, which starred Hanks. 

He admitted he had reservations about taking the job in the first place, having been hand-picked by a Paramount executive despite his own doubts. 

"I went completely against my tummy, and it hit me in the face with a 2x4," he said.

Winkler has previously traced the source of the friction to a specific moment while scouting locations in Carmel, California, where a fan recognized him from his Happy Days role as Fonzie but not Hanks. 

"We were in Carmel, this little seaside wonderful town on the coast of California, looking for a location, and a woman comes, honest to God, comes running out of a shop and says 'Henry, Fonz! Oh, my god!'" he recalled. 

"And I say, 'And, of course, you know Tom Hanks.'" 

He's said the film's director of photography later told him he saw the writing on the wall from that very moment: "I knew that this was going to happen, on that day in Carmel."

Winkler also pointed to a more recent, smaller flashpoint: a Happy Days retrospective for which his team sought a 60-second clip of Hanks's guest appearance on the show, a request that went unfulfilled. 

"We did a retrospective of Happy Days, and we wanted 60 seconds of Tom Hanks in his episode and we did not get permission for that," he said.

Hanks has never publicly addressed the tension, while Winkler has previously described their in-person interactions as cordial, telling TMZ back in 2020, "I don't have a feud with Tom Hanks. What everybody says and what is true are two different things," and recalling a warm run-in with Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, at an awards show shortly before the pandemic.