FREDDIE PRINZE....THE SWEET LAUGHTERMAN

FREDDIE'S SON - FREDDIE PRINZE JR.

Freddie Prinze Jr. carries his dad's name with pride. "I was blessed with it and out of respect to my father, I wouldn't think of changing it to anything else," he says.

Prinze never knew the man whose name he bears. He was 10 months old when his dad died. Still, Freddie Jr. says he has a "pretty good sense of who Dad was," when he watches tapes of his father's comedy shtick. "The hardest job in the world is to make people laugh, and my father was just brilliant."

His first role had only four lines, but in 1994, when 18-year-old Freddie Prinze Jr. landed a job on the hit sitcom Family Matters, he knew just what to do. "I went to my father's grave in Forest Lawn," he says. "I put my hand on his plaque and I said, 'Thank you. I hope you're watching now. I hope to make you proud.'"

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Rosie.

Rosie: Everybody know's your dad was the amazing Freddie Prinze. He died when you were just a baby right?
Freddie: Yeah, 10 months old.
Rosie: Do you get to watch the videos of him and does that give you a sense of who he was?
Freddie: Actually it's very hard to get footage of him, but I have seen a little bit and it does give you a sense of who he was but mainly you like stories. People tell you stories and you grab onto their memories and make them a part of you, with the good and the bad stuff of course. He was a practical joker. Like my Uncle Ron was his manager, This is one of the funniest stories I ever heard about my dad. My mom and dad were young. He was like 20 and she was like 23 and they were on an airplane and my uncle was like the adult. Well, he would always fall asleep and he would snore really, really loud ( he gestured with his mouth open). Now he's going to be mad at me. My dad he took a grape and dropped it in his mouth and he choked on it and my mom and dad didn't even try and help him, they were just laughing. He was like dying. But I prank like him only on sets.