Henry Winkler teams up with son Max for HBO miniseries King Rex
Henry Winkler will star in the series with Max directing the pilot
Aux News HBO
Henry Winkler’s keeping it in the family for his next show—both his literal family and his HBO family. The Barry star’s next project will be a miniseries over at HBO, titled King Rex. Winkler is set to star in the show, while his son, Max Winkler, has signed on to direct the pilot.
The miniseries is based on the 1980 Texas Monthly article, “Rex Cauble And The Cowboy Mafia,” written by Lawrence Wright. The series reportedly “explores a buried treasure of a True Crime mystery—how a North Texas kingdom got itself smashed to pieces by a judge’s gavel, the IRS, and the FBI.”
Per Deadline, the elder Winkler will “play the gangster Cauble and insiders say the character is straight out of the gangster pic Casino and unlike any character the Emmy-winner has ever played.”
In the Texas Monthly article, Cauble’s described as “a square-faced oilman with bushy eyebrows and a big-shot cigar, and although he was only a neophyte breeder of quarter horses at the time, he had ambition and a fortune to spend.” He was a millionaire who hated drugs, had close ties with politicians, and a close friend involved in drug smuggling.
This marks the first time the father and son have teamed up for a project. Henry Winkler currently stars in the third season of the HBO series Barry as acting coach Gene Cousineau. The comedy actor is known for his roles on Happy Days, Arrested Development, Parks & Rec, The Waterboy, Children’s Hospital, and so much more.
Max Winkler first directed the Michael Cera series Clark And Michael back in 2006. Since then, he’s directed episodes of American Horror Story, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, New Girl, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and most recently the HBO series Minx.
On the film side, he’s known for his work on Ceremony, Flower, and Jungleland. In addition to King Rex, Max has a forthcoming film project titled Our Thing, starring Steve Carrell and Jake Johnson. While Winkler has never worked with his dad, he certainly seems to love working with Johnson.
7 Comments
Has Winkler ever played a bad guy before? I haven’t checked IMDB, but I can’t think of an example. (It wouldn’t surprise me if he did a guest spot on Matlock, though)
He had a very short-lived sitcom in the 90s where he played a Rush Limbaugh-style conservative pundit with a wacky family who didn’t approve of his political leanings. (also starring a young, pre-Friends David Schwimmer!)
That definitely counts.
He played a killer on Law & Order: SVU where most of it was him pretending to be a nice guy, but then he got a nice villain moment towards the end. Martin Short had a similar episode.
He played a guy on Happy Days that went from being a fairly realistic depiction of a working-class Italian-American mechanic who was a side character to an all-powerful character who changed the focus of the show from the realistic Cunningham family to focus on him and his wacky stunts (including the infamous “jumping the shark” sequence that coined that phrase to describe similar cases in other shows). I’d count that as a “bad guy”.
There was the time he fought Mork.
If Max had curly hair, he’d be Kyle Mooney.
The latest episode of the podcast Good One has Winkler doing live acting instruction to students. It’s pretty insane and fun, highly recommended.