Ron Howard revealed some startling information about his former Andy Griffith Show co-star Don Knotts in an Instagram post last weekend.
Knotts, the celebrated comedian who died at 81 in 2006, starred with a baby-faced Howard on the classic sitcom from 1960 until 1968. Howard and Griffith remained friends after the show ended and well into the former’s successful career as a director. But as it turns out, the two also shared a much deeper bond that Howard only learned about recently.
“A fun photo of the day in ‘97 when Andy Griffith and Don Knotts surprised me with a visit to the set of Ransom in Queens,” Howard captioned a photo of the three men on the set of the 1995 Mel Gibson actioner. Then, with no fanfare, Howard dropped some bombshell news: “It was recently confirmed that Don and I were actually distant cousins!” the Happy Days alum revealed.
Knotts played dimwitted deputy Barney Fife on the TV show, which starred Griffith as the town’s widowed sheriff and father to precocious Opie (Howard). The future director would later credit Griffith with inspiring his tenacity as a director. “Andy was like a wonderful uncle to me,” Howard told People in 1986, the year the cast reunited for the TV movie Return to Mayberry. “He created an atmosphere of hard work and fun that I try to bring to my movies.”
Last year, Howard told Conan O’Brien that working on the show was a once-in-a-lifetime creative experience, especially for a young artist. “It was so much a function of kind of a singular creative voice,” Howard said of Griffith. Yet while the star would sometimes “kill jokes if they were too broad,” he wasn’t afraid to let his ensemble dictate some of the show’s rhythms. “How lucky was I to grow up in that situation where the actors were set up…to participate, make suggestions?” Howard marveled.
