Jordan Peele's 'Nope' blends blockbuster thrills with grand ideas

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey, sitting in for Terry Gross. The HBO comedy series "Barry," about a hit man who pursues an acting career, is nominated for six Emmys this year, including outstanding comedy series. Today we feature interviews with Bill Hader, who stars in it and co-created, co-writes and is one of its directors, and with Henry Winkler, who co-stars in the series. Both of them have won Emmys for their respective lead and supporting roles and are nominated again this year.

Here's a scene from the recently completed third season, which got increasingly unpredictable, dark and impressively original. Barry, played by Hader, is in a store shopping for clothes while at the same time trying to dictate into his iPhone an apologetic email to his girlfriend, Sally. As he recites his stiffly composed message, we hear the piped-in shopping mall music and see the alarmed expressions of the other shoppers as they hear the content of Barry's email. Barry, after all, is guilty of doing some pretty creepy things.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARRY")

BILL HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Hey, Sally, exclamation point. I just wanted to say I appreciate you for calling me out for being a, quote, "violent ass****," end quote. I am sorry for all the [expletive] I put you through over the past couple of weeks, parentheses, yelling at you at work, comma, offering to break into your boss' house, comma, take sleeping pictures of her, etc., etc., end parentheses, wincing emoji.

BIANCULLI: Bill Hader became famous as a performer and writer on "Saturday Night Live." Terry talked with Hader in 2019 after the first season of "Barry." Barry is a Marine who has suffered from depression and PTSD ever since returning from Afghanistan. He's become a hit man, using his deadly skills to kill people for hire. As Barry pursues his latest target, he follows him to an acting class. Barry ends up being dragged up on stage for an acting exercise and oddly enjoys it. In this scene from Season 1, Barry asks the acting teacher, Gene Cousineau, if he can join the class. Cousineau is played by Henry Winkler.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARRY")

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Hey, Mr. Cousineau. I was wondering, do you think I was good enough to be in your class?

HENRY WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) No, Barry, I don't. What you did was dog**** - I mean, really, really awful. Dumb acting, I call it. Do you know why? Because acting is truth, and I saw no truth. So here's my advice to you. You go back to whatever nook of the world you call home, and you do whatever it is you're good at because this is not it.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) You want to know what I'm good at? I'm good at killing people. Yeah. When I got back from Afghanistan, I was really depressed, you know? Like, I didn't leave my house for a month. And this friend of my dad's - he's like an uncle to me - he helped me out, and he gave me a purpose. He told me that what I was good at over there could be useful here. And it's a job, you know? The money's good. And these people I take out - like, they're bad people. But lately, you know, I've - like, I'm not sleeping, and that depressed feeling's back, you know? Like, I know there's more to me than that. Maybe - I don't know. Maybe there's not. Maybe this is all I'm good at. I don't know. Anyway, forget it. Sorry to bother you.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) What's that from?

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) What?

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Are you telling me that was an improvisation? Interesting. The story's nonsense, but there's something to work with. My class is not cheap.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Well, that's not a problem.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) You pay in cash.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Yeah.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) You pay in advance.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) I can do that.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Next class, tomorrow 2 p.m. We start on time.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Absolutely.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) What's your last name again?

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Block. Barry Block.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) You pay in advance.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Yeah. No, I know.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Gene M. Cousineau. I look forward to this journey.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Bill Hader, welcome back to FRESH AIR. I love the series.

HADER: Hi.

GROSS: Well, that clip kind of summarizes part of what the first season was about, Barry knowing that he's a good hit man but truly wanting a different life. And he has trouble speaking the truth on stage. But when he speaks it off stage, like he did in that scene, people don't always believe him 'cause it seems...

HADER: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...So preposterous. And that's a kind of constant thing in the series, that when people, like, act the truth, people don't necessarily want to hear it. When they act the more, you know, stage version of the truth, that's a distortion of the truth, people, like, give them accolades (laughter).

HADER: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I always find that's true, especially in art in general. It's the kind of harsh reality of something. You know, I think you could - kind of a cynical way - well, it doesn't really sell and things like that, which may be true. But I think also, what we - in the writers room, when we talked about it was - you know, Alec Berg, who co-created the show with me - we realized, you know, I think people just don't like hearing about it. (Laughter) You know, people like a nice story.

GROSS: It's a bummer.

HADER: It's a bummer.

GROSS: As one guy says (laughter).

HADER: Yeah. We - that was the thing we kept saying. It was like, oh, that was a bummer. Yeah. That was like - it was a real bummer. And so, yeah, a lot of times the - you know, in Season 2, the whole - Henry Winkler's character, the acting coach, Gene Cousineau, makes them do a truth exercise. Talk about your deepest truth of who made you who you are. And to be honest and real, that makes you an artist, and how, one, that's really hard to do and, two, do people even really want to hear that?

GROSS: Yeah. How did the idea of a hit man who wants to be an actor get started? Like, what was the germ of that idea?

HADER: Alec Berg and I were kind of put together by our mutual agent. This is back in 2014, and...

GROSS: Oh, so you weren't buddies. Like, somebody, like, played matchmaker.

HADER: I know him. Yeah, someone played matchmaker, and it worked (laughter). Yeah, we're in the same comedy circles and stuff like that, but we thought, oh, well, let's go. And, you know, I had this deal at HBO and - to make a show, but I didn't know what the show was. And then we would sit and we talked about one idea for a while and we realized that, you know, it was kind of an idea that didn't have any stakes to it. We realized, like, we had a great pilot episode, and then when we thought of what would be other episodes, we didn't have anything, which is kind of...

GROSS: Wait. What was that first idea?

HADER: It was essentially me playing someone I grew up with in Tulsa, Okla. It was kind of the character - I was in a movie called "Hot Rod," and the character I played in "Hot Rod" - it was kind of like a version of that guy. And it was very much like a day-in-the-life, kind of meandering thing of this kind of wayward guy in Oklahoma. And it just was boring (laughter), you know? Like, I just was like, I can't really get into this. I mean, we have bits. There's comedy bits, but where's the emotion? Where's the story? And, really, where are the stakes to it, you know? And so we kind of had this breakfast - I remember a bummer breakfast - right? - where we both were, like - kind of separately went, I don't think this idea works. It's kind of - it doesn't really hold water. And I go, there should be stakes. And I remember he said, oh, you know, life and death - you know, that's the ultimate - right? - death, you know? And I just said, well, what if I was a hit man? And he went, eugh (ph).

GROSS: (Laughter).

HADER: I hate hit men. And he said, hit man's like dogcatcher. There's more intelligent in movies than there are in real life. You know, there's not - hit man - what is that, you know? But what do those mean, you know? And it's not a guy - it's not, you know, the kind of cool guy with two guns in his hands with the long tie. Like, what if we - you know, the black tie and the suit. You know, what if we made it real? And we talked about that, and then - I'm not joking. We suddenly both got fixated on the idea of him being an actor. I don't know why. I don't know where it came from. We just both started talking about him taking an acting class.

And we - and I remember specifically, Alec going, hit man who wants to be an actor? That's funny. That's good. You know? And then we started seeing these interesting correlations of the conflict within that of, you know, a hit man wants to be in the shadows, but an actor wants to be in the spotlight. A hit man wants to be anonymous, but actors want to be known. A hit man wants to suppress his emotions, where an actor wants to constantly be, you know, harnessing their emotions and all these things. So it was a funny - it just seemed, you know, the acorn, the seed of the idea could, you know, give us a tree that'd, you know, give us a lot of interesting stories and different branches and places to go off to.

GROSS: So I want to get back to the idea of, you know, acting as truth-telling, as telling some, like, emotional truth and drawing that emotional truth from deep within yourself. So did you ever go through that kind of soul-searching as an actor? You didn't go to acting school, right?

HADER: No, I went to Second City LA. I just - I learned just improv. But not - I never took an acting class, really, like the one that's in the show.

GROSS: So, like, what kinds of experiences or secondhand experiences are you basing that class on where it's all about, like, getting to the emotional truth? And sometimes, like, the acting teacher will emotionally push one of the students to the edge to get them to the point where they're ready to, like, be emotionally naked on stage.

HADER: Well, we - I mean, we went to acting classes and audited them and sat in the back.

GROSS: Oh, as research for the series?

HADER: As research for the series, yeah. So - and then at some point, Alec just had to go because some of the people would recognize me and it would be weird and - what is he doing here? And so Alec would kind of go by himself. But we saw in the pilot, there's a scene between Henry Winkler, who plays Cousineau, and Sarah Goldberg, who plays Sally Reed...

GROSS: One of the students.

HADER: ...Where he berates her into getting the right emotional response. And we - Alec saw that.

GROSS: Oh, really?

HADER: He ended up calling me, saying, I just saw this thing where this guy just went after this actress hard to get her to this place. And then she started doing the scene, and she was really, you know, crying and so thankful for him for getting her there, you know, and all this stuff. And he said it was very strange.

GROSS: The acting teacher in the series, the Henry Winkler character - Henry Winkler basically says to the acting student, you know what I call that? That's fake acting.

HADER: Yeah.

GROSS: And he's really, like, mean, but then...

HADER: Oh, yeah. He calls her babe and chick, yeah.

GROSS: But then she gives this, like, brilliant performance afterwards. Yeah.

HADER: But it was a great way of introducing the world of this for Barry, as this guy who's kind of emotionally closed off, of going, oh, I need someone to do that. I need that for some reason. I need someone to access an emotion that I'm too afraid to kind of look at. I know I need this on some level.

BIANCULLI: Bill Hader speaking to Terry Gross in 2019. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEASTIE BOYS' "TRANSITIONS")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2019 interview with former "Saturday Night Live" player Bill Hader, who now stars in the HBO comedy series "Barry." Hader has won two best comedy actor Emmys for his role as Barry and is nominated again this year. He's also nominated for his work on the show as a director.

GROSS: The first time I interviewed you, I didn't know about this, but apparently, when you were on "Saturday Night Live," you had a lot of anxiety about performing live and even had, like, a panic attack, I think while the show was on, while you were...

HADER: Yeah. On the air, I had a panic attack.

GROSS: ...While you were doing a bit playing Julian Assange.

HADER: Yeah, I was doing - playing Julian Assange on a panic attack. It was fun (laughter).

GROSS: Can you describe what happened then?

HADER: Yeah. I was doing Julian Assange. It was Jeff Bridges hosting. And I don't know what happened, but I suddenly went, I can't breathe. It felt like - it just felt like I was dying. I just - that's the only way I could describe it. It just - the panic - I think it was a bit of exhaustion. And also, I've - I'm a very naturally anxious person. You know, I'm always - and in some ways, it's good because when I'm directing a thing, I'm eight steps ahead of things, and I'm trying to make sure things are in order and things like that.

You know, we talk about the things that we wish we could change in ourselves. And, you know, I'm very, very anxious. And it could kind of make me slightly isolated or not being in the moment in a thing. And on "Saturday Night Live," I felt like the majority of my time there, especially in the first half of it at least, I wasn't in the moment. I was very, very, very nervous - heart palpitations, sweating. I would get dizzy. I would - you know, I remember once, it got to the point where I became completely convinced that either a piece of equipment was going to fall on me or that someone was going to storm the stage, that someone from the audience was going to run up on stage...

GROSS: Wow. That seems like...

HADER: ...And, like, attack us.

GROSS: ...Unusual things to worry - like, 'cause...

HADER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It got crazy. It got a little...

GROSS: ...I thought you'd be worrying about, you know, like, I'm going to forget my lines. I didn't know you were worrying about...

HADER: No, and you forget your lines and things.

GROSS: Yeah.

HADER: It went from that to that. So once I started getting into these other things, then I - you know, I started doing, like, TM. And, you know, you take, you know, a medication. You go to a therapist. You know, I really - you know, exercise, changing my diet, I mean, all these things to try to get this under control. And, you know, it's just acknowledging it, you know? You just kind of go, that's not happening. You know, relax. But I think it got to a really bad place. And I think - in "Barry," it's not so much the anxiety of it. It was more of this idea that I was naturally good at impressions.

And I was telling Alec Berg this when we were just starting writing. I go, you know, I was always good at impressions, but I - what I always wanted to do was write and direct. I moved out to Los Angeles 20 years ago to be a writer-director. And I was a production assistant, and I did all these things and, you know, was a crew guy forever and then kind of happened - you know, in a fluky way, got on "Saturday Night Live" (laughter), you know? Megan Mullally saw me in a show. I got on "Saturday Night Live," and I was not prepared for it.

And I was saying it's so ironic that all the things I was writing and directing were never really - all the short films I made were never very that good. And the scripts I were writing was - they were not good. I had a lot to learn. But I could kind of just do impressions. And the irony was that the show I did, the impressions on it, was, like, slowly destroying me because of the anxiety of having to perform in front of a bunch of - in front of the nation, you know? I just - I still get - I hosted, like, a year ago when I was a wreck.

And I told Alec this, and he went, I think that's the show. It's about a guy who thinks, you know, the thing he's naturally good at's destroying him, but the thing he wants to do, he's not very good at (laughter), you know? And he goes, well, that's an emotion you understand. We can write that.

GROSS: So I have to ask you about your eyes. On "Saturday Night Live," you always - you have very big eyes.

HADER: (Laughter).

GROSS: And you're one of those people who can, like, raise one eyebrow.

HADER: Yeah.

GROSS: And on "Saturday Night Live," you always used your eyes great for comic effect. On "Barry," staring into your - like, when I look at your eyes on "Barry," like, sometimes your eyes are saying, like, thousand-yard stare, the stare of a soldier who's seen combat too long. Sometimes, it's the stare of someone with just, like, so much existential dread. And sometimes, it's the stare of somebody who has just become overtaken by rage and anger. And I wonder if you think about your eyes at all or whether they - it just kind of happens that your eyes communicate so much.

HADER: Yeah, I don't think about it at all. Thanks for saying that. That's a nice compliment. It's funny you say that because I always - there's a funny thing that happened with one of our editors, Kyle Reiter, where we were watching Episode 4, and I just went, do I have any other facial expressions (laughter)? I just have the same facial expression this whole show. I just look angry. And he played this clip, and it's me - he plays the take. I do the take. And then you hear our director of that episode, Liza Johnson, going, that was great, Bill. Do you want to do another one? And I go, no, I'm good. I think we got it.

(LAUGHTER)

HADER: You know? And he (laughter) - he's like, do - you know, do another take, man. (Laughter).

GROSS: Did you?

HADER: No. No, I would always do...

GROSS: (Laughter).

HADER: I always do, like, two takes. I'm like, did I say everything right? Are we good? OK, let's move on. You know.

GROSS: Is that because you want to save time and money and get everything made on time and all that stuff?

HADER: Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm like - I'm not precious. I'm weirdly - I like very few - in the edit, I like fewer choices. I kind of like having to be forced to make a decision as opposed to - you know, when I was in my early 20s, these idea that - I thought it was so romantic that Stanley Kubrick would shoot 150 takes.

(LAUGHTER)

HADER: And now, I'm like, that's crazy.

(LAUGHTER)

HADER: Why would you do that? That makes - and now that I've done it, I'm like, wait. That's insane, you know? You don't need to do that.

GROSS: Just watching the takes is going to take forever?

HADER: Yeah, but it doesn't - they - I think there's this thing of directors want actors to stop acting, so they pummel them to death with a lot of takes. And I just feel like that's someone who's not really respecting an actor and also someone that - all you have to say is, hey; could you try this? You know (laughter)? Could you do less?

GROSS: Bill Hader, it's been great to talk with you again. I regret that our time is up. Thank you so much...

HADER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...For coming back to FRESH AIR.

HADER: Thank you. This is a giant - this is a huge honor.

GROSS: Bill Hader speaking to Terry Gross in 2019. The co-creator and star of HBO's "Barry" is up for Emmys this year as both actor and director, and "Barry" itself is nominated for outstanding comedy series. After a break, we'll hear from another of the show's Emmy nominees and former winners - supporting actor Henry Winkler. And Justin Chang reviews "Nope," the new movie from Jordan Peele. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GRAMATIK'S "ROAD TRIP")

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. Henry Winkler became famous 46 years ago for his role on the ABC sitcom "Happy Days" as Arthur Fonzarelli, aka the Fonz. Since then, he's been in movies and TV shows, including recurring roles in "Parks And Recreation" and "Arrested Development." He won an Emmy in 2018 and is nominated again this year for his supporting role in HBO's "Barry." In one of the most recent Season 3 episodes of "Barry," Henry Winkler is showcased as the acting teacher, recording a video ad for an online and in-theaters master class. And he's talking about masks.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARRY")

HENRY WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Hello. I'm Gene Cousineau. And I'm a mask collector. Wait a minute. Isn't this supposed to be a masterclass in acting given by the great performer, Gene Cousineau? - you're saying to your laptop or mobile device. And, yes, it is. Don't fret it. And by the end of this class, hopefully, you're going to be a mask collector, too, God willing. Let me give you an example of my favorite masks. Hamlet - to be or not to be. Is that the question? Stanley Kowalski - Stella, get down here. Get down here. I want to eat. Or a cop in "Serpico" - hey, Serpie. Are you going against us? You see? These are not literal masks. They are roles that you're going to play in this class. And they are going to change your life.

BIANCULLI: When the HBO comedy series began, Barry, played by Bill Hader, had come to Gene's acting class to fulfill a hit man contract and kill one of the students. But Barry was so intrigued by the teacher and one of his classmates that he decided to stay and try to pursue acting and change his life. Terry Gross spoke with Henry Winkler in 2019. In this scene from the first season during an acting class exercise, Barry tells the story of the first time he shot and killed someone in Afghanistan. Gene is moved by Barry's story and tries to convince Barry to tell the Afghanistan story onstage. Here's Henry Winkler as Gene Cousineau and Bill Hader as Barry.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "BARRY")

BILL HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Mr. Cousineau, I don't really have to tell the story I told yesterday in front of an audience, do I?

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Of course not.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Oh, good. Thank you.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Yeah. No. That version is just the beginning. See; during rehearsal - and this is just my instinct - you're going to find more complicated, [expletive] up details. Those, we have to hear.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Right. But, you know, you said that this is a story that has to define us. And I just - I don't think that's the person that I am.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Barry, you're justifiably nervous.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Yeah.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) But I will not hear a word about switching it out one iota for something less compelling. You, sir, are doing Afghanistan.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) See; I wanted to do the story about meeting you.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) Go on.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Yeah. You know, being in this class, and seeing you teach and...

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) So you want to tell the story of meeting me?

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Yeah.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) I'll allow it.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Good. That's great. That's great. I think it'll be way better than Afghanistan.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) I can be as involved as you need me to be in order to craft this piece, or I can stay on the sidelines. I totally understand. Either way is fine.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) OK. I don't think I need...

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) But who would know more about me than me?

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) That's a good point, but I don't think you need to be involved at all, you know? I was there, so I remember.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) I've got scrapbooks.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) Oh, cool.

WINKLER: (As Gene Cousineau) If you need them. I've got diaries. I've got pictures. I've got tapes, Barry. I have got a lot of tapes.

HADER: (As Barry Berkman) I think I'm good, Mr. Cousineau. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Henry Winkler, welcome to FRESH AIR. You're terrific in this role. I'm so glad to have you on our show.

WINKLER: Thank you.

GROSS: So your character, Gene, is so intent on getting truthful performances from the students and have them dig deep into their souls. But he's also so narcissistic and wrapped up in the mystique he's tried to create around himself in this little class. This must have made you think a lot about some of the best and worst acting teachers you had now that you're playing an acting teacher. Have you kind of gone back to look at your past and your acting teachers?

WINKLER: I have. I've had about 14 teachers, from Emerson College to Yale Drama School, just in between those seven years. And what was amazing is that some of them were inspirational. Some of them were mean. Some of them lost their way. And some of them had nothing to say.

GROSS: What is one of the worst acting exercises you were obligated to do when you were a student?

WINKLER: I did an exercise with one of my favorite teachers. His name was Bobby Lewis. He was a member of the Group Theatre. Bobby Lewis had us pick a painting, pick a character in the painting, get some element of clothing that represented that character, take the pose, step out of the pose and create who you thought that person was.

I am so dyslexic. I got my piece of costume. I struck my pose. I stood there. And he said, is there any reason you are mirror opposite to what is in the painting? I said, no, I'm not. There's no reason at all. And I just turned around and immediately struck the pose in the other direction. And he started to cry. He said, you're making a mockery of my work. And I had no idea what he was talking about.

GROSS: Wow. That seems really harsh.

WINKLER: Except that he was the man - to be honest, most of what I know, most of what I use in my well of education comes from the great Bobby Lewis.

GROSS: So do you attribute this, like, mirror reverse thing that you were doing to the dyslexia?

WINKLER: I do. I had no idea. And I, of course, had no sense of self at that time. I was an unrefrigerated bowl of Jell-O just before it congeals. I just thought, well, that's it. My career is over. My - they're going to kick me out of school.

GROSS: So is that an example of bad teaching, when you kind of ruin somebody's - when you lower somebody's self-esteem even lower than it already was? Is that - (laughter) - is that helpful?

WINKLER: You know what? I think a lot of acting teachers, they talk about breaking bad habits. They talk about breaking you down. And I totally get that. But I have also - I've taught four classes in my life. And I think you can get an actor to move off their position or her position without making them feel like poop from a whale at the bottom of the ocean.

GROSS: And by the way, you didn't know you had dyslexia at the time.

WINKLER: I did not until I was 31.

GROSS: And you found out at the age of 31 because...

WINKLER: Yes, after my stepson was tested because he was so verbal and he is so smart, but he couldn't do reports. He couldn't write. He couldn't organize his thoughts. And when we had him tested, everything that they said about Jed was true about me. And I realized, oh, I'm not a stupid dog. I actually have something with a name.

GROSS: How is that helpful, to have a diagnosis?

WINKLER: The first thing? I got very angry because all of that - all of the arguments in my house with the short Germans who were my parents were for naught. All of the grounding was for naught. Then I...

GROSS: You mean punishment grounded - like, you're grounded.

WINKLER: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

WINKLER: Yes. Like, I couldn't go to the dance on Friday night.

GROSS: Because your grades weren't good.

WINKLER: I couldn't watch - my grades were horrible. I am in the bottom 3%, academically, in America. That is calculated. And then I went from all of that anger to - I now understand, possibly, if I didn't fight through my dyslexia, I would not be sitting at this microphone chatting with you.

GROSS: Right. So you really had to work hard to work through the dyslexia so you could learn your parts. I mean, if reading is hard, how are you going to memorize a part?

WINKLER: Well, memorizing is different from the reading. The reading was - is still difficult for me. I - when we did "Happy Days," I embarrassed myself for 10 years reading around that table with the producers, the other actors, the director, the - all of the department heads. On Monday morning, we read the scripts. I stumbled over every word. I was completely embarrassed. Memorizing, if it's written well, my brain is then able to suck it up like a vacuum cleaner.

GROSS: I want to talk a little bit about "Happy Days." How would you describe the series and your character to people too young to have seen it?

WINKLER: It was a story about a family, about the trials and tribulations of living together. It was set in the '50s, where the music was great. And my character was a tough guy who rode a motorcycle, wore a leather jacket and had a very soft heart.

GROSS: Your character exuded confidence...

WINKLER: How did I do?

GROSS: Good. Good.

WINKLER: Thank you.

GROSS: I don't think you got to the more goofy parts of the character (laughter).

WINKLER: What would that be, in your mind?

GROSS: OK. That he thought he was, like, it, you know, that he was just, like, the greatest, most handsome, most...

WINKLER: Oh, people treated him like that.

GROSS: Right.

WINKLER: I don't know that he thought he was 'cause when he - you know, the first thing I said to the producers when they called me on my birthday in 1973 and said, would you like to play this part, I said, hey. When he takes the leather jacket off, when he takes his jacket off, who does he have to be cool for in his apartment? If you let me show the other side, it would be my pleasure to play this character.

GROSS: Wow. Did you really, like, tell them who the character needed to be before you accepted the part?

WINKLER: No.

GROSS: OK (laughter).

WINKLER: Not - you - I would not tell Garry Marshall, rest his soul, who I thought he had to be. But I put the character on, and then they let me sew it onto my being.

BIANCULLI: Henry Winkler speaking to Terry Gross in 2019 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF PHOSPHORESCENT'S "BLACK WAVES/SILVER MOON")

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2019 interview with Henry Winkler, a supporting actor Emmy winner for his role as acting teacher Gene Cousineau on the HBO comedy series "Barry." He's been nominated again this year.

GROSS: So I want to ask you about your parents. I don't know if they're still alive or not, so...

WINKLER: They are not.

GROSS: They're not. OK. So your...

WINKLER: No.

GROSS: Your parents were German immigrants. They came...

WINKLER: They were.

GROSS: ...Here in 1939.

WINKLER: Yes, they did.

GROSS: So - and you're Jewish. So...

WINKLER: Through Ellis Island. I am.

GROSS: ...It's good they came when they did. I think...

WINKLER: That's true, or we would not be sitting here.

GROSS: ...The door closed right behind them. Yeah. So what - how did they know to leave?

WINKLER: My father knew.

GROSS: I always wonder how people know the time is right and they'd better get out.

WINKLER: My father knew that it was time. He got a six-week visa from Germany to come and do work in New York but was expected to come right back. I have told this story - that he took his mother's jewelry, bought a box of chocolate, melted the chocolate down, put the pieces of jewelry in the chocolate box, melted the - poured the chocolate over the jewelry, put the box under his arm, so when he was stopped by the Nazis and they said, are you taking anything of value out of Germany, he said, no, you can open every bag. We've got nothing.

And the jewelry that he encased in chocolate, he sold when he came out of Ellis Island into New York and was able to start a new a new life here, slowly but surely. I have the actual letters from the government each time my father requested to stay a little longer, and they would say yes. And I was born, and thank God, 'cause I love our country.

GROSS: This was the U.S. government giving him permission to stay.

WINKLER: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: And you had an uncle who stayed behind a little longer and couldn't get out, right?

WINKLER: I did - Uncle Helmut. And he was supposed to escape with a submarine that was supposed - you know, they had a meeting place. And they - a lot of friends were going to get on this submarine and get out. And he said, no, no, no, I'm just going to stay one more day. It'll be fine. I'm having a white dinner jacket made at the tailor, and I think I can wait one more day, and I'll be OK. And he was taken to Auschwitz. And I just did a show called "Better Late Than Never," where I traveled around the world, and I saw the plaque in the street that commemorated my uncle and every other Jew that was taken from Berlin. And it said his - Helmut Winkler, his date of birth, when he lived in the building, the plaque was in front of, and what year he was taken to Auschwitz.

GROSS: So was it - was your family religious? Were you raised...

WINKLER: My family was religious. They are certainly more religious than I am. I am proud of my religion. My children were all bat and bar mitzvahed. But I'm not as traditional or keeping the tradition as my parents were. We said the prayer over the bread and the wine and the candles on Friday night. We had Shabbat dinner. My parents went to temple every week. They - my father was president of the temple.

GROSS: Do you think that the Holocaust made your parents feel more strongly about being observant?

WINKLER: I don't have an answer to that question.

GROSS: OK.

WINKLER: I didn't like them so much I didn't pay attention a lot. I didn't...

GROSS: You didn't like your parents. Is that what you're saying?

WINKLER: That's - yeah, I didn't.

GROSS: Yeah.

WINKLER: Now, certainly now, I've mellowed, but a lot of my life was fueled by the fury of these two people who were so nonpresent on who I was on the Earth.

GROSS: Do you think that your parents, having gotten out just in time, your uncle having died in Auschwitz...

WINKLER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...You know, the knowledge of what happened to everybody who - all the Jews who stayed behind in Germany...

WINKLER: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: Do you think that that made your father more disappointed in you and in your difficulties reading and everything? Because it's like, what do you have to complain about? Why can't you be better? Look what happened in Germany. Like...

WINKLER: You know what? I don't know if that is true. Listen. I figure the trauma of leaving your country, losing your family, the Holocaust of - what was happening in the world at that moment certainly affected the way they were. But on the education part, the being lazy, the not living up to my potential, being a shtum hunt, which is dumb dog, I think that was in his DNA. I think that they brought that with them with or without a war.

GROSS: So in addition to your acting, you also have co-authored a series of novels about...

WINKLER: Yes.

GROSS: ...A boy named Hank who has...

WINKLER: Yes.

GROSS: ...Dyslexia, as do you.

WINKLER: Yes.

GROSS: And it's in a special typeface, which I thought was really interesting.

WINKLER: Well, the younger...

GROSS: I didn't know there was a typeface for dyslexic people.

WINKLER: You know what? There wasn't.

GROSS: Oh.

WINKLER: And a dad in Holland came up with it, and the publisher, Penguin Putnam, chose the typeface. It was the first time it was ever used in America. And I have to say, I am so proud because I could have used it. It just makes the eye track so much more easily across the page for the...

GROSS: Yeah? What makes it different?

WINKLER: The ascending line of the T, the descending line of the G. The C is - there's a different distance in the opening of the C. They are more weighted at the bottom of the letter, so they sit more comfortably on the line so that they don't float. There are so many things. He was a - he is a graphic designer, and he's dyslexic. His children are dyslexic. And when you look at the novel itself, when you look at the page, you go, I get it. It's just so much more friendly.

GROSS: Henry Winkler, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much.

WINKLER: Thank you.

BIANCULLI: Henry Winkler of HBO's "Barry" speaking to Terry Gross in 2019. Like the show's star and co-creator Bill Hader, Henry Winkler has won an Emmy for his role and is nominated again this year. Coming up, film critic Justin Chang reviews "Nope," the new movie written and directed by Jordan Peele. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "JOY RIDE")

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. After tapping into the horrors lurking beneath the surface of American life in "Get Out" and "Us," writer and director Jordan Peele ventures into alien sci-fi territory with his new thriller titled "Nope." The movie, which opens in theaters this week, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as siblings who witness what may be an extraterrestrial visitor to the California desert. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: The title of Jordan Peele's smart and subversive new thriller, "Nope," is muttered a lot by the characters on screen usually in frightened response to the very big, very bad thing they see flying overhead. This is Peele's version of a UFO thriller, his winking homage to classic alien-invader stories like "War Of The Worlds" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind." But as you'd expect from the writer-director of "Get Out" and "Us," which used the horror genre to tell stories about racism and class oppression. "Nope" also has something topical on its mind, and figuring out what that something is is part of the fun. For now, let's just say it has something to do with movies themselves.

The story takes place in the wide-open desert spaces of Agua Dulce, which lies about 50 miles north of Los Angeles and is a popular Hollywood filming location. The two protagonists are a sibling duo who own a ranch and also work as horse wranglers on movie and TV sets. Daniel Kaluuya plays the stoic, taciturn brother, Otis Haywood Jr., who goes by O.J. in one of the script's more deadpan asides. By contrast, his sister Em, played by a terrific Keke Palmer, is full of warmth and energy. In this scene, she and her brother are wrangling a horse on a set, and Em explains the history of their family business.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NOPE")

KEKE PALMER: (As Emerald Haywood) Did you know that the very first assembly of photographs to create a motion picture was a two-second clip of a Black man on a horse? And that man is my great-great-grandfather.

DANIEL KALUUYA: (As O.J. Haywood) Great.

PALMER: (As Emerald Haywood) There's another great-grandfather. But that's why back at the Haywood Ranch, as the only Black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood, we like to say since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game.

CHANG: Another major character here is Jupe Park, played by Steven Yeun, who runs a kitschy old-West-themed amusement park in Agua Dulce near the Haywoods' ranch. Jupe was once a child actor on a mid-'90s family sitcom built around a chimpanzee until the show was canceled after a gruesome on-set tragedy. Between that and the horse wrangling, Peele is clearly interrogating Hollywood's long history of animal-related accidents and abuses. What any of this has to do with a possible alien invasion might seem mystifying at first, but Peele brings the connection gradually into focus.

Before long, that flying saucer is peeking out from behind the clouds and zipping over the desert landscape, triggering power outages and raining down all kinds of misery. But Peele smartly keeps us from getting a really good look at it early on. He's learned the crucial lesson of Steven Spielberg's "Jaws," namely that the less we see of the monster early on, the scarier and more effective the buildup will be. And like "Jaws," "Nope" becomes a double-edged chase thriller in which the saucer soaring overhead is both hunting and being hunted by the people scurrying on the ground below. But the movie also plays like a Western with its horses and ranches and, finally, its story of a ragtag crew coming together to mount one last stand against a monstrous threat.

The other Spielberg classic that Peele leans on heavily here is "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind." Not unlike Richard Dreyfuss' character in that movie, O.J. and Em, along with two unlikely allies well-played by Brandon Perea and Michael Wincott, become obsessed with their otherworldly visitors. But they don't just want to find out the truth. They're hell-bent on capturing visual evidence that what they're seeing is real. It's here that "Nope" becomes a cautionary tale of sorts in a way that dovetails with Peele's larger critique of Hollywood. He's questioning our sometimes mindless attraction to spectacle, whether we chanced upon it in real life or in a big-budget summer movie like this one.

Not everything in "Nope" works. After a beautifully controlled build-up and a genuinely thrilling mid-section, the movie's third act sputters a bit as Peele tries to tie all his grand ideas together. But it's a thrill to see a big-budget summer movie that actually has ideas. And Peele's confidence as a filmmaker seems to grow with every movie. One scene in which O.J. rides a horse with the you-know-what nipping at his heels brings to mind nothing so much as the famous Cary-Grant-versus-crop-duster sequence in Hitchcock's "North By Northwest." In "Get Out" and "Us," Peele plunged us into shadowy funhouses of horror. In "Nope," he has the skill to let terror take hold in broad daylight. And no less than his petrified characters, you might find it awfully hard to look away.

BIANCULLI: Justin Chang is film critic for The LA Times.

(SOUNDBITE OF LITTLE BARRIE'S "BETTER CALL SAUL MAIN TITLE THEME")

BIANCULLI: "Better Call Saul," the AMC prequel to "Breaking Bad," has only four episodes left before winding up the story of how Jimmy McGill became Saul Goodman, a sleazy, fast-talking lawyer representing slip-and-fall patients and drug lords. On Monday's show, we talk with Bob Odenkirk, the star of "Better Call Saul," and the show's co-creator and showrunner, Peter Gould - hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE PORTER'S "ALPINE SHEPHERD BOY")

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Tina Kalakay. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE PORTER'S "ALPINE SHEPHERD BOY")

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.