It's hard to picture the role of Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli played by anyone other than Henry Winkler. The hair, the iconic "Ayyyy!", the leather jacket. It's just so iconic. 

However, the role very nearly went to another legend... Monkees drummer himself, Micky Dolenz!

As told to People, after The Monkees ended in 1968, Dolenz found himself struggling with being typecast. After all, The Monkees were a cultural phenomenon. Whenever Dolenz showed up for an audition, people had a hard time seeing him as anything else. Dolenz said that one time, he walked into an audition only to hear "What are you doing here? We don’t need any drummers!"

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It didn't get to Dolenz too much; after all, he'd faced something similar before. Prior to The Monkees, he had been a child star on the 1956 series Circus Boy. “After Circus Boy," Dolenz explained, "I went to a few auditions as a 12-year-old, and the minute I walked in, they’d say, ‘Circus Boy!’ That’s just typical in this business. I knew it was par for the course.”

That all nearly changed in 1973, when he came up for the role of Fonzie in the new Garry Marshall-created sitcom, Happy Days. "I almost got it," Dolenz said. "Supposedly it was between me and Henry Winkler."

Being up against a genuine Monkee made Winkler sweat. "The story I heard is that he was in the waiting room, saw me come in, and thought, ‘Oh s---, I’ll never get this — Micky Dolenz is here!’ So we laugh about it now."

Despite his worries, the role went to Winkler, and he became a breakout star. Does Dolenz have any hard feelings about the missed opportunity?

"Oh my God, he’s just so good," Dolenz said about Winkler. "I was definitely not as good as he was. Come on — he was The Fonz! He had that New York, New Jersey thing down. I’m from Southern California. It wasn’t gonna happen!”