John Stamos tried to get Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen fired from Full House when they were 11 months old and he’s finally explained why.
It’s hard to imagine Full House without the adorable face of Michelle Tanner — but according to Uncle Jesse himself, that almost became a reality.
In both his memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, and an appearance on the Good guys podcast, Stamos opened up about the chaos of day one filming with the then-11-month-old twins.
“So, we’re carrying the baby downstairs and we take her in the kitchen and we hose her down,” he told hosts Josh Peck and Ben Soffer. “And she was screaming. Both of them. They wanted to be anywhere else but there, and so did I.
“They were 11 months old, and God bless them. They kept switching: ‘This one’s not gonna cry.’ I couldn’t deal with it.”
In the memoir, he recalls being “upstaged” at the table read by co-star Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie Tanner) and admits he was already having second thoughts about signing onto a family show.
“I’m dying to pull the rip cord on this family-friendly hell, but I’ll fulfill my contractual obligation to shoot the pilot. Keep it professional.”
Then came the diaper-changing scene — and the meltdown, per today.
“I’m trying to get through a scene, and the cutesy twins are crying their heads off. They’d rather be anywhere in the world other than that set, and I’m right there with them.
“I screamed at [the producers], ‘I can’t work like this.’ And so they got rid of them.”
Or as he told Full House creator Jeff Franklin: “It’s either me or them. They’re not going to work out. They’ll ruin this show and my career.”
But the replacements didn’t go as planned.
“It was only a few days, and I said, ‘Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible,” Stamos told the podcast.
In his book, he writes that the new twins were “quiet, calm, and homely as hell.” He now suspects Franklin planned the switch to make him regret his decision:
“I can’t help but wonder if Jeff deliberately chose the homely twins fully aware that I wouldn’t like them and would beg to get Mary-Kate and Ashley back.”
He adds that the Olsens were likely waiting backstage the whole time.
Despite the rocky start, Stamos says their bond blossomed.
“I adore them, and they adore me,” he writes.
He even took the girls to Disneyland off set. Writers began developing more scenes for Uncle Jesse and Michelle because of their chemistry.
Stamos says he remained close with Mary-Kate and Ashley even after Full House ended in 1995.
They came to see him in Broadway’s Cabaret: “It’s pretty weird having adult Michelles sitting there in stereo watching me play someone so different from their beloved Uncle Jesse, but they get it. We share a mutual pride for how far we’ve all come.”
They even attended his wedding to Rebecca Romijn, along with other Full House castmates.
