There have been a lot of beloved duos on the screen that worked together but didn’t enjoy it one bit. Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in ABC’s 1985-1989 breakout hit series Moonlighting comes to mind. There were rumored high tensions between the stars of 2009-2016’s Castle, Nathan Fillion and Kate Beckett, that some say caused her to leave the show entirely. But one iconic friendship on-screen stands out as one of the most memorable and beloved, Batman and Robin, on the 60’s comedy-action hit show Batman. The Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder stuck together through thick and thin for the three years the show was on the air and a theatrical feature film. You’ll be glad to know that the stars behind the masks, Adam West and Burt Ward, were equally close in real life.
Ward recently spoke with Closer Weekly and questions about his most iconic role arose in the interview. His very first audition was for Batman while he was still studying acting at UCLA and helping his father with his real estate business. A chance meeting with a producer and a lot of initiative from 19-year-old Ward led to him getting cast as Robin in the show. Right off the bat (snicker) upon meeting West, they got along.
“Within five minutes of meeting, the two of us were laughing so hard they had to tell us to quiet down. We just clicked. He was the funniest person I have ever met in my entire life.”
This friendship continued throughout the rest of their lives even during the downtime from filming the show when they would go out on weekends to play tennis. After the ending of the show and the death of West’s mother, the two became even closer and reunited with each other many times publicly at conventions, tv reunion specials, several animated series in which they reprised their roles, on episodes of The Simpsons, Spongebob SquarePants, and Futurama, and in a 2003 biographical action-comedy film Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt.
In the interview, Ward also discussed his relationship with his wife since 1980 Tracy Posner, their activities with animal rights groups together, the dangers of doing his own stunts on Batman, and that if it wasn’t for ABC insisting that he only play Robin, almost getting the lead role in The Graduate. Ward always comes across as charming and certainly has a lot of stories to tell, many of which he relates in his 1995 autobiography Boy Wonder: My Life in Tights. More than anything, we’re always pleased to hear that Bruce Wayne and his ward were as thick as the thieves they thwarted on tv.