Henry Winkler is having one royal summer!
In June, the Barry star toured Ireland, Scotland, and England with his wife, Stacey, while promoting his 2023 memoir, Being Henry — and even had a private chat with Queen Camilla.
“We were invited to Ascot, the royal races. You heard about it in My Fair Lady, you hear about it all through history, and we were invited,” Winkler, 78, tells PEOPLE, noting that he sourced “a top hat and tails” for the event.
Once there, King Charles III and Queen Camilla “arrive[d] in an open carriage pulled by these incredible horses, then we have a three-course lunch,” he recalls.
But the experience became all the more memorable with an unexpected request.
“Then all of a sudden, a rumor or a buzz goes through the room. ‘The Queen wants to meet Henry.’ So we walk down onto the paddock onto the green, and all of a sudden these 12 men in forest green cutaways march out,” he recalls. “She comes in white in the middle of them and walks up. I tip my hat, and I talk to her like she was my Aunt Liz. There is no disconnect. There’s no royalty. There is just this lovely woman who knows about my children’s books, the Detective Duck series.”
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Winkler’s U.K. trip was packed; at one point he stepped into a recording studio to voice DIRECTV’s new “For the Birds” campaign.
“I stopped in Bristol, went into a cave of a studio, and recorded from there to Los Angeles,” says Winkler.
He and Steve Buscemi reunited to resume voicing their city-window peeping pigeons, this time joined by Hall of Famer Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders in spots that remind TV fans that DIRECTV’s services – including live NFL and college football games – can also be accessed satellite.
The commercials mark Winkler’s 16th collaboration with Buscemi for DIRECTV. “Without knowing Steve really, without being in the room, without being even on the mic together from his recording studio and mine, it’s one of those magical moments where we meet in the middle,” says the Happy Days alum.
And Winkler still gets a kick out of voicing the iconic NYC bird.
“People call and say, ‘Are you a pigeon? Did I just hear you as a pigeon?’ It is the first time, and unfortunately from afar, that I get to work with the great Steve Buscemi,” he says.
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The spots bring the native New Yorker, who has made Los Angeles his adult home, back to his city days.
“I miss New York,” he says. “You can take the boy out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the boy. I see myself as a transient now. I’ve been here since ’73. My wife is Los Angeles; my children, my grandchildren, my dogs, my home, my work. But I’m always thinking, ‘I’m going back.’”
