Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels celebrating his 95th Birthday
Jeff Conway
Whether you love him for his popular role as Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Mark Craig or as the recognizable TV voice behind a talking Pontiac Trans Am that calls itself KITT, actor William Daniels has left a lasting impression on multiple generations of audiences. Now reaching the milestone age of 95, Daniels has taken a well-deserved step back from his celebrated stage, film, and television career to enjoy the simpler things in life today.
“I’m very happy having a comfortable way of life now without having to perform or do anything stressful,” Daniels told me exclusively this week. “I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do.”
These days, Daniels lives quietly in his southern California home alongside his wife of 70 years, Bonnie Bartlett. Daniels recalls confidently asking out Bartlett, 92, while they both attended Northwestern University for acting and the pair have been together ever since.
When I asked the longtime couple how two people reach 70 years of marriage, Bartlett says, “So much happens and you live – the good things, you hurt each other. We’ve hurt each other but you recover and you grow and you change and you adapt. You have to be able to adapt to the other person. You have to think of them first. It doesn’t happen overnight. It took us years to get to a real companionship marriage.”
Daniels continues by saying, “At first, there’s a lot of struggle and there’s a lot of uncertainty of whether you’re in the right business at all when you can’t get a job and you can be difficult – difficult to live with because of all this uncertainty. What you really have to do is learn to respect the other person and their feelings and try to be as easy (laughs) to live with as you possibly can.”
Out of all of the outstanding performances Daniels has given over the years, I wondered if one specific role remains nearest and dearest to his own heart. “He really loved doing 1776, playing John Adams,” Bartlett says of her husband. Daniels played the Founding Father in the Tony Award-winning musical that premiered on Broadway in 1969. He also reprised the role in the 1972 film adaptation, produced by Jack L. Warner, retired former president of Warner Bros., and Columbia Pictures on a four million dollar budget.
Howard Da Silva and William Daniels as Ben Franklin and John Adams in “1776”
Martha Swope
While speaking about his mentality toward acting after all these years, Daniels says, “I don’t agree that there’s two different ways of acting, stage and film. I don’t buy that. First of all, on-stage, you don’t really have to yell. If you understand that you have to enunciate clearly, it’ll go to the back of the house. So yelling and with people that I worked with, they always [were] a little taken back that I didn’t and I would tell them not to yell either because it’s just a whole different way of delivering things. Not as personal.”
Bartlett is no stranger to Hollywood herself, building her own impressive legacy within the industry. She played the mother of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1988 film Twins, she played Tim Allen’s mom on the hit ‘90s series Home Improvement, as well as other memorable television performances on Little House on the Prairie and The Golden Girls, just to name a few. This real-life husband and wife even played spouses Dr. Mark and Ellen Craig on the 1980s drama St. Elsewhere, where their individual performances made them both Emmy winners during the mid-1980s.
William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett winning individual Emmys in 1986 for their performances on “St. … [+] Elsewhere”
The Daniels Family
“We both have the same goals,” says Bartlett. “We both liked acting. We both liked when the other one worked.” Daniels adds, “There was never any jealousy between the two of us. We were happy when the other one was working.”
Rather indisputably, the performance from Daniels that seems to stick with audiences most of all has been his portrayal as the wisdom-filled educator Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World. Premiering as part of the coveted “TGIF” primetime line-up on ABC in 1993, Boy Meets World was a smash hit right out of the gate with 16.5 million viewers tuning into the pilot episode. Daniels continued on in his beloved Mr. Feeny role for all seven seasons through 2000 and new generations continue to learn about his nurturing on-screen presence today with the entire series now streaming on Disney Plus.
(from left to right) Will Friedle, Trina McGee, Rider Strong, Matthew Lawrence, William Daniels, Ben … [+] Savage, Danielle Fishel, and Maitland Ward on “Boy Meets World”
ABC
“I look back on it as being a pleasant experience,” Daniels says of his years on Boy Meets World.
“Bill loved all those kids, he did,” Bartlett adds, who became Mr. Feeny’s love interest and ultimately his wife in later seasons as character Dean Bolander. “He likes them now, too. We see them! They’re all great.”
Rider Strong, Ben Savage, William Daniels, and Bonnie Bartlett on “Boy Meets World”
Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
Now nearly 22 years since the series finale of Boy Meets World aired on television, these occasional Boy Meets World reunions have become possible through the public’s growing demand for interactive fan conventions happening all across the country. Following a slower and more virtual experience over these past couple of years due the Covid-19 pandemic, Daniels and Bartlett now often travel to these special events for fans to get to see them and interact with them in-person.
When speaking about the recent times he has been able to see his young Boy Meets World co-stars, Daniels says, “They’ve grown up. They’re adults, they’re married, they have children. It’s a whole different scene.”
Rider Strong, Will Friedle, WIlliam Daniels, Danielle Fishel, and Ben Savage at the Fan Expo Boston … [+] in 2019.
@mrbilldaniels (Instagram)
Bartlett tells me that Boy Meets World fans often get very emotional when they see Daniels at these conventions and when he is spotted out in public. So, being a firsthand witness of this ongoing public adoration for Mr. Feeny, I asked Bartlett why she thinks this particular character of his continues to have such an enormous impact on people.
“Because Mr. Feeny is the last thing he has played,” shares Bartlett. “By then, Bill could become Mr. Feeny. Dr. Craig was kind of mean, you know? John Adams was tough. By the time he was Mr. Feeny, all the good stuff that is Bill came through and that’s him. That’s all of his growth, his development.”
Bartlett will soon be interacting with fans again from April 22-24 when she attends “Golden-Con” in Chicago, which is a celebration of all things The Golden Girls. Bartlett played Barbara Thorndyke on the classic sitcom, remembered as the very rude friend of Bea Arthur’s character Dorothy.
Bea Arthur and Bonnie Bartlett on “The Golden Girls”
NBC
“Bea and I were old friends,” Bartlett reveals. “I knew Bea from New York. We were buddies because we both had adopted children and we both talked about our boys and the adoption and all of that. And I knew Rue [McClanahan] and I had met Betty [White], but I had no idea that it would be this popular. And Barbara Thorndyke, people will call me that sometimes and I think Oh my god!”
Beyond their business of traveling the country for these fan conventions lately, Daniels has also found a lot of demand on the popular Cameo app, which offers fans to pay for personalized videos from their favorite stars. Bartlett tells me that Daniels initially got involved with Cameo when their Boy Meets World co-star Will Friedle told them about the video platform and asked Daniels if he would be interested in creating video messages for his many fans.
Bartlett tells me, “Bill said yes and our son Michael helps him to do them. He helps to write them and then Bill does them. We use the money that we’re making now because we don’t want anything, we don’t need anything – we use it to help educate our grandchildren. And then it goes to the Democratic Party, wherever I can, to Ukraine. Means I can write a lovely check. I love that.”
Both Daniels and Bartlett say that they still enjoy working and take on the occasional new acting project. Daniels finds himself often being asked to record lines in KITT-like fashion, similar to the popular voice work he did in the 1980s as the talking car on the television series Knight Rider.
David Hasselhoff and William Daniels as the voice of KITT, the car, on “Knight Rider”
NBC
“I thought talking like a car was ridiculous, but it wasn’t,” Daniels says with a laugh. “It became very popular. KITT! I’m no judge of anything. I should just do it and shut up.”
Over these 95 years, Daniels has fiercely committed to the many diverse roles that he has encountered, with a lifetime of memories and public praise to show for it. So, what is the plan for Daniels and Bartlett when celebrating his actual birthday on March 31?
Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels inside their California home
Jeff Conway
“He’s happy to stay home and happy to stay here,” says Bartlett. “He’s very content and if we’re together, we’re okay.”
William Daniels
Jeff Conway
Daniels wraps up our conversation by saying, “I’ve been very lucky to be able to make a living at this highly-competitive business that I’m in, overly-stocked with actors and would-be actors. So, if you make a living at it, I say bravo to you and to myself! I am really a very lucky guy and I’m very content at where we are right now.”
