Mayberry is forever.
On Feb. 15, Ron Howard shared a sweet photo on Instagram from years ago when he was visited on set by his The Andy Griffith Show costars Andy Griffith and Don Knotts.
Howard, 70, wrote in the caption, “A fun photo of the day in ‘97 when #AndyGriffith and #DonKnotts surprised me with a visit to the set of #Ransom in #Queens. It was recently confirmed that Don and I were actually distant cousins!” (Howard perhaps misremembered the date, since Ransom, which starred Mel Gibson and Rene Russo, was released in 1996.)
Howard played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show from 1960 to 1968. He was just 5 years old when he was cast as the son of Griffith’s Andy Taylor, the beloved sheriff of Mayberry. Knotts played Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife, a role that garnered him five Emmy Awards.
Howard went on to star in another beloved TV series, Happy Days, but eventually pivoted to directing, helming movies like Splash, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind. The Oscar winner shared with PEOPLE in 1986 that back on The Andy Griffith Show, he told his costar and the producers that he wanted to be a “writer-producer-director” one day, and they bought him his first camera.
“Andy was like a wonderful uncle to me,” Howard explained. “He created an atmosphere of hard work and fun that I try to bring to my movies.”
In 1986, Howard, Griffith and Knotts reunited with many of their The Andy Griffith Show castmates for the TV film Return to Mayberry. In the movie, Opie becomes a father for the first time and Barney runs for sheriff — only to decide it should be Andy’s job once more.
Knotts died in 2006. He was 81 years old. Griffith died in 2012 at age 86.
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But Howard’s first show, and his costars, have maintained a special place in his heart. Speaking to Conan O’Brien in June 2024 about why the show was so good, he attributed it to Griffith. “It was so much a function of kind of a singular creative voice,” he said. Though Griffith wasn’t a producer, “It was his show, it was tailored to his sensibility.”
He explained, “Andy used to kill jokes if they were too broad. He just kept saying, ‘The South is plenty funny on its own.’ ” Other shows about the South were too slapstick and silly for Griffith, Howard explained.
Howard said that some of the show’s most famous scenes — which featured Knotts and Griffith having meandering conversations — happened when an episode came up short. Knotts and Griffith would decide what the scene would be about and then would just film it.
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Howard added, “How lucky was I to grow up in that situation where the actors were set up … to participate, make suggestions?” He said that even as a kid, he felt comfortable making suggestions, though at first they “never went anywhere.”
But, Howard said, he’ll “never forget” that when filming the second episode of season 2, when he was 7, he pitched a different line that he thought sounded more like a real kid. The director let him change it. “I just felt this surge of being involved in something,” Howard remembered, though he also remembered Griffith teasing him about the moment, too.
