Better Late Than Never returns tonight for a special preview, and this season your favorite oldies but goodies, William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman, and Terry Bradshaw, are heading to Europe. At a recent press conference, they talked about their experience hitting the road together again with their sidekick, Jeff Dye.
Season 2 of Better Late Than Never has a two hour premiere on January 1 (9-11 p.m. ET), and will air Mondays (9-10 p.m. ET) beginning Jan. 8 on NBC. Catch tonight’s Special Preview: Dec. 11 (10-11 p.m. ET).
How was it traveling together this time?
William Shatner: It was exhausting. No question that we worked 12 hours a day, and had to make these things up
Henry Winkler: 40.
William Shatner: For how many days?
Henry Winkler: 40.
William Shatner: 40 days. Some of the younger members: Me, Jeff — We were okay.
Terry Bradshaw: “Younger,” being under 69.
Jeff Dye: Yeah, it’s really exhausting having to eat these really great meals, and going to these beautiful places, and do all these fun things in lands that I’ve never been to before. It is very tiring, though.
Henry Winkler: What’s exhausting is that there are five cameras and no script. So from the morning until the night, when we are put in situations, we don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, and we don’t know what is going to happen inside, being in that situation. It is amazing because we have to talk to each other, listen to each other, be funny, and engage. It’s pretty it’s tiring.
Who is the funniest?
Terry Bradshaw: George, believe it or not, is probably
George Foreman: I had a lot of fun.
Terry Bradshaw: –the funniest person
George Foreman: I had a lot of fun.
Terry Bradshaw: Yes, you did. Thank you. If he says he had a lot of fun, he had a lot of fun. Who’s going to argue with him; right?
Who was the best wing man out of the four?
Jeff Dye: That’s a good question. Well, I’m still single, so I would say probably none of them. Also, I have no game whatsoever. So that’s the problem. Terry has tried to set me up in every city.
Terry Bradshaw: We were around a lot of animals, though, on this trip.
Jeff Dye: All of them are so nice, but, like, Terry will literally be, like, “You like that girl,” and I’m, like, “Yeah, she’s very pretty,” and he’ll literally just go, “Hey, you like my boy?” Girls aren’t into that. That doesn’t work well.
Terry Bradshaw: Got no play here. No play.
Who has the best game out of the four of them, then?
Jeff Dye: Well, they’re all married, but I will say that they’re all very all the girls that are on the show, they’re always, like, “Oh, my God, he’s so sweet.” They all, like, hold on to each moment. Henry, I think, is the one that they think is the most sweet. If you’d ask the crew.
Terry Bradshaw: Ahhhh.
William Shatner: “Sweet” is a horrible word. What about exciting? Dynamic? Manly?
Henry Winkler: I’m that, too.
Jeff Dye: I can’t throw these words around anymore in this climate.
William Shatner: He’s sweet. He is sweet.
Henry, it looks like you took a lot of photos. Will we ever see them?
William Shatner: Oh, yeah, we seem them.
Henry Winkler: You know what? I always send them to the producers, and they always send them back. I’ve sent them on little chips; I’ve sent them on hard drives, on soft drives, on no drive.
Jeff Dye: He’s always filming. We’ll have all the cameras; right? Because he’s, like, “Five cameras; no script.” Oh, but Henry’s camera is always running. It’s literally a first person iPhone shoot from Henry’s camera the entire time.
Terry Bradshaw: And he’s always losing the camera.
Henry Winkler: I have the entire trip right here, if anybody wants to see.
How many photos have you got? That’s got to be over a thousand.
Jeff Dye: Millions.
Henry Winkler: I take a lot of photos because you never know which one is going to be it. So, I do. And I like doing that. And so, I have it. It’s what I do.
We’ve seen from the previews that Terry gets undressed, and you do, too, Henry. Is there any chance in Season 2 that we might get to see all five of you in the buff?
Jeff Dye: That’s an inappropriate question. We’re not pieces of meat, ma’am.
William Shatner: I carry pixilation with me.
Henry Winkler: Yeah, we have pixilation apps on our phone for any moment.
Jeff Dye: Also, on Season 1, I was the first person naked on Season 1 in the pod.
Henry Winkler: Terry’s comfortable.
Jeff Dye: Sex sells, baby.
Terry Bradshaw: Yeah.
Henry Winkler: And our executive producer came to me, he said, “Look, I would like you to do this,” and I was really petrified, but, then, what happened is after a while, you forget that you’ve got no clothes on.
William Shatner: You’re the only one who forgets. We all remember. It’s, like, emblazoned.
Henry Winkler: I thought it was a wonderful gift for you.
Terry Bradshaw: Not a comfortable thing, I can tell you that. That is not a comfortable thing.
Henry Winkler: I saw myself, and I thought, oh, my God, I look just like that Butterball turkey we just had. There I am.
George, do you carry that terrycloth (eye cover) with you at all times?
George Foreman: Yeah. Yeah. Must have it. You must keep it with you at any time, at all times.
Terry and George come from the world of sports, Henry and William come from playing tough guys on television movies. Do any of you, at any moment, have any apprehension about showing that lighter, fluffy, funnier, uninhibited side?
William Shatner: “Sweet” is the word you’re looking for.
Terry Bradshaw: I think the thing that was most uncomfortable was not knowing certainly, I knew who they were, but asking questions such as what you would expect: Hey, I wonder if they’re nice guys? I wonder if they’re, like, you know, what I’ve seen on television? Which, you know, most times, they’re not. They’re a character on television, but what are they like in person? Because if they’re not if I don’t really like them, then this is going to be this is not going to be fun, you know, to be gone this long. That’s why I was apprehensive about going out and doing it. I didn’t know I didn’t understand the format, and I didn’t know the people. The only one I knew was George. And so, you know, are these guys going to be really nice people? And it turns out, you know, that’s exactly – they are nice people. And so, it was easy. So, it was it was not hard for me at all because I find humor you know, I live in humor. Humor was I’ll do pretty much anything. That’s why I get naked in all the shows. Because I’m the only one that you can, obviously, tell that lifts weights and is in great shape.
George Foreman: I have 14 grand kids. And once you the first one, they only care about laughing. You’ve got to make them laugh. You have to turn on that whole character of no heavyweight champion here; make them laugh. So it was easy for me.
William Shatner: But that is the work. The five of us having being put in a situation, being interviewed. Now, not only just being interviewed and stupidly dull, but for the show, you’ve got to be interesting and entertaining and interact. And it’s work. I mean, you’ve got to be thinking all the time. It’s high level, high wire acting. You’re being yourself, and words that spontaneously arrive, and the fun we can have with each other. It’s hard work making something out of nothing, essentially. And that’s where we all met.
Henry Winkler: I also think that I was asked, as the executive produce, to come in, and then, would I be in the show, and then, they explained it to me, and I was scared. I was it was really scary. A lot of people we asked to join us, didn’t want to travel at all. They didn’t even want to consider it.
Terry Bradshaw: Is that before you asked us? We really weren’t the first choice? I didn’t know that.
George Foreman: First time I heard that. First time I heard that.
Terry Bradshaw: Now, I’m pissed. I went 40 days away from home and I wasn’t even the first choice? In sweaty ass Asia, and eating bugs and worms. You’ve got to excuse me, folks, but I’m not real happy right now. Sorry. Whose place did I take?
Henry Winkler: But you haven’t even given me a chance to say that that was after we chose you.
Terry Bradshaw: Oh.
Henry Winkler: The thing is that this is not a normal television show. We can’t sit up here and go, “Yeah, the scripts are great, and wow.” This is like a gift in our lives. It was amazing that for two seasons we have traveled all over the world together; we have experienced things we would never even know existed, or we would never have gotten to do. This was our job. It was truly an amazement any way you cut the ice. And Terry, you were third or fourth.
Terry Bradshaw: I’m used to it.
Jeff, you get to spend so much time with, like, four legends. Do you have a favorite?
Jeff Dye: No. They always ask me who my favorite is, but it’s a weird question. I love all these guys a lot. I joke around the most with Terry, and I’m always goofing off and stuff, and I have – but I have great, great, great, great moments with each of these guys. And one thing that’s really cool about this show is even if it’s just lunchtime, and we’re not filming and stuff, we’ll sit with each other, and I’ll get to hear great things. I can’t share them here, but I will tell my friends, like, “Bill told me this thing,” and we’ll, like, just howl about a story that he told me, and I’ll have it forever. I’ll have that moment forever. I get to vacation with four of the coolest guys in the world. Not that it’s a silly question, but people do ask me all the time, “So, who is your favorite?” And it’s, like, well, if you watch the show, it seems like me and Terry are like because he’s, like my dad, but
Terry Bradshaw: We’re the closest. Just say it. Don’t worry about feelings.
Jeff Dye: Terry Bradshaw.
Terry Bradshaw: He drinks beer; he eats food. Sadly, he comes five or six times a year.
Jeff Dye: That’s right. I hang out with Terry a lot.
Terry Bradshaw: He was coming home to, what, Thanksgiving, and he ended up having to go do a gig.
Jeff Dye: At Christmas, I’ll be at his house.
Terry Bradshaw: Oh, yeah. That’s my boy. I have three girls, and I’ve got one
Jeff Dye: Yeah, I love all of them to death. But, yeah, me and Terry probably get along the best because we’re both the youngest on the show.
Let’s just say all four of you do another season. Can we expect to see more of the competition angle?
Henry Winkler: Jeffrey is truly an athlete; Bill is an athlete; Terry was an athlete. George is an athlete; I am not an athlete. One of the great moments in the two years: We’re on the beach in an athletic moment. We’re on the beach in Thailand, and Terry is being the quarterback. All of a sudden, there were these young 20 year old Thai young fellows, and they’re playing against us. I’ve never played football in my life. Terry threw me the ball seven times, and seven times I dropped it. On the eighth time, the Thai men had their hands up in order to block the pass. He, kind of, like, threaded the needle, and I caught the pass. I caught a pass from Terry Bradshaw. Terry came running at me like I was his teammate.
William Shatner: And tackled you.
Henry Winkler: No, he lifted me up and sqooze my bones into a pretzel.
Jeff Dye: “Sqooze.”
Henry Winkler: But he was so excited that I actually caught the ball.
Terry Bradshaw: Well, you caught the hardest pass. The others you should have easily caught, but that was the hardest. So, you’re a man of the moment.
Henry Winkler: I was a man of the moment.
Terry Bradshaw: And we threw the knives, or whatever it was in Japan. Who was that? Bill. Bill got the star.
George Foreman: A ninja.
Terry Bradshaw: George got in the ring with Bill and knocked Bill out; right?
Henry Winkler: In Thailand.
George Foreman: He begged for it.
Terry Bradshaw: Bill deserved it.
William Shatner: I wanted to catch a pass from Terry Bradshaw, and I wanted to get knocked out by George Forman. What’s wrong with that?
Henry Winkler: Not a thing.
Do you each have a favorite memory from either the past season or this season that you could share with us?
Henry Winkler: Oh, my gosh, there are so many. One of my favorite moments of all times was meeting Natalie the elephant in Thailand. She made me cry. She looked me in the eye, I looked her in the eye, I said, “My name is Henry, I am very happy to meet you,” and I started to cry. Because you can feel the empathy, or whatever it is, coming off this 15,000 pound pachyderm. It was so touching. I was not prepared for it.
William Shatner: I rode a horse that had been trained by the Spanish Riding School in Spain. And I knew the cue. I was able to put the horse through its fundamental moves. That was a thrill. I haven’t talked much about that but that place with the horses and the three of us are horsemen it was very special for me.
George Foreman: I ate the bugs. In Thailand, I ate the bugs. They were delicious. They were really delicious. Better than potato chips.
Henry Winkler: The wing span was so big.
Jeff Dye: We went all over the world and there were a million bugs, and that’s what you liked.
George Foreman: Yeah, you constantly eat potato chips, and everyone says, “Don’t eat those things.” And they’re crunchy. The bugs were delicious.
Terry Bradshaw: I don’t eat bugs. I didn’t eat bugs. You all ate these wiggly you all ate what was that thing? The octopus.
George Foreman: That was good, but the bugs were better.
Terry Bradshaw: And George ate drank mice wine. Mice baby mice – baby mice – hairless little baby mice.
Jeff Dye: And camel burgers. I had a nibble of the camel burger.
Terry Bradshaw: Oh, I ate the camel burger until they…
Jeff Dye: Disgusting.
Henry Winkler: The camel burger was not bad.
Jeff Dye: That’s disgusting.
Henry Winkler: No, they had ketchup. It was pretty good.
What did you learn from Season 1 that helped you with Season 2?
William Shatner: Well, we got together more. We had tested each other out in a way, conversationally, and physically, athletically, and we had become accustomed to each other, and how the show works, or how it began to establish how it worked. The second season was for me, was much easier, in that we knew what to expect: humor; fun; relationship; honesty; friendship.
Terry Bradshaw: Where to go; where not to go. What line you can cross; what line you can’t cross. I think when the show was so successful, and people said, “You guys look like you like one another; the chemistry works.” You don’t know that it’s going to work. You just don’t. You put all these people together, and you don’t know if it’s going to work. And it works.
Henry Winkler: And you can’t fake it.
Terry Bradshaw: Bill’s right. The more you get to know someone, the freer you become with who you are. The second season, it was not unlike when we saw each other. This is the first time today that we’ve been all together; all right?
Jeff Dye: Yes.
Terry Bradshaw: I’ve seen Jeff and Henry; I haven’t seen George and Bill. Text, but haven’t seen. Today, it was so good to see them. You hug and kiss each other on the cheek. That’s the bond that we’ve developed, and that comes through being together, knowing, learning about one another, learning the line you can cross. Because you can cross a line. And we did. We crossed lines, and then, we said, “Okay. We won’t cross it again.” And you say, “Okay. We’re here doing a show. This is all for the show.” We’ve grown, and we developed relationships now that’s special. It’s pretty special. That’s why I hope this goes forever and forever because this is just so much fun. It’s so much fun with these guys.
Jeff Dye: I think something I learned, too, is that from Season 1 to Season 2, is to, kind of, like, trust the process. Like, with him, like, for I never with these guys, I feel like that’s the easy part. I love them; we laugh. We have great moments that we don’t even shoot because we’re just enjoying each other’s company. So, that, for me, I don’t over think too much. I’m just going to have a good time and say what I want, and listen to them, and laugh when they say funny things, but sometimes, we’re put in a scenario, it’s, like, why are we in a castle? Like, what is this? So, I have to — that was the hardest part for me to trust that this is also it’s not just us five, it’s also a team and a network and producers. It’s a whole thing. We have our little family, and then, we have the show family, we have the so, there’s a lot to it. But for Season 1, I was always just chiming in, instead of just saying, “He’s going to do this job; they’re going to do their job; we’re all just going to be having fun.” For me, that was the most that’s what makes Season 2 easier.
William Shatner: Because traveling is onerous. Traveling, even under the special attention by the network who takes our luggage and buys the tickets and gets us through the lines and stuff like that, the lumpy mattresses, the weather, the clothing, the sweat, the smell, the bad food…
Jeff Dye: The stinky fans that want photos with you.
William Shatner: The stinky fans.
Jeff Dye: Diseased, actually. I think that’s what you called them.
William Shatner: The potential for disease. The disaster. It’s all onerous.