David Joyner

David Joyner is an actor, suit performer, and therapist who is best known for being in-suit as Barney from 1991-2001 on Barney & Friends and its predecessor Barney & the Backyard Gang. He played the loveable purple dinosaur for six seasons, numerous home videos, and a couple concerts, all with Bob West doing the voice of Barney. Though I bet David had extreme difficulty physically performing the character as he was in a heavy costume biting down on a rod that moves Barney's mouth. Over the years, Joyner got to interact with a few Muppet performers like Alice Dinnean and Noel MacNeal in the Kids for Character video, doing their characters from The Puzzle Place. Non-Muppet performers he met include Todd Duffey, Brice Armstrong, and Earl Fisher who did the puppet characters from Seasons 4-6, though they were all built by James Kroupa's company. In later years, he also was the suit performer of the title character on the show Hip Hop Harry from 2006-2008 and 2016-2019. Besides suit performing, David Joyner acted on camera in numerous shows such as ER, The Young and the Restless, and a couple of Nickelodeon shows, to name a few. I'll bet he was relieved to get out of that heavy dinosaur costume after leaving Barney in 2001, who can blame him? According to Wikipedia, he also works as a tantric massage therapist outside of acting, that's very unique for performers to work in the medical field. David seemed to have made a family of suit performers for Barney, first David Voss, then him, then finally Carey Stinson. Joyner is still acting today on camera rather than in-suit which must be a relief to him. And hey, he did interact with a few Muppet performers in Kids for Character. He is one of those black performers to do legendary characters throughout the world of entertainment. David Joyner, you were stupendous as Barney and super hip as Hip-Hop Harry. Keep on balancing your acting and medical career so that you'll be both happy and healthy. But no matter what you do, there can never be a better Barney body performer than you. "Super dee-duper" David. You're a true role model Joyner!

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