Frances Bavier on Don Knotts: “I don’t think I said more than five words to him” during the entire run of The Andy Griffith Show
Some friendships are forever, and sometimes two people are simply destined to be nothing more than coworkers. Both of these trajectories are completely fine, but for many viewers, it can almost be painful to imagine that the characters we see on screen are not actually as friendly with each other in real life.
In an interview with The Herald-Sun, Frances Bavier spoke about her co-star, Don Knotts, during their time together on The Andy Griffith Show. While Knotts only spent five seasons of the series as a main character and Bavier remained for the entire duration, Barney Fife and Aunt Bee were commonly found on-screen together. As Andy’s best friend, it only made sense that Barney and Aunt Bee develop some kind of a relationship.
But in the interview, Bavier revealed that while she and Knotts were on screen together quite a bit, they didn’t spend as much time talking behind the scenes. She said, “I don’t think I said more than five words to him the whole time.” The distance between the two wasn’t based on mutual dislike. Rather, Bavier maintained that she still felt comfortable working around Knotts, so it was clear that she respected and liked Knotts as a co-star.
Apparently, Knotts was also quite suave when he wasn’t playing bumbling Barney Fife, and even Bavier noticed. She continued, “One time I told him ‘You’re as attractive as Fred Astaire.’ He has style and he thinks he’s a Don Juan. He used to wear a trench coat with the collar turned up and a girl on his arm. You had a hard time not laughing. But he’s nice, he’s very nice.”
Bavier said of the series, “The humor in The Andy Griffith Show is the hardest kind. It’s so gentle, so subtle. It’s not a farce, so you can’t scream it out. It’s on a thin wire.”
She also likened the show’s durability and longevity to classic children’s stories, “They are like fairy tales. Children read Cinderella a hundred times. The shows are like an adult fairy tale.”
