John Stamos almost quit his role as Uncle Jesse in “Full House” after the show’s first table read.
Stamos, 59, said he “hated” filming “Full House” in Thursday’s episode of “Hot Ones,” but, “obviously, I ended up loving it.”
Initially, the show was pitched as an adult comedy with Stamos, Dave Coulier and the late Bob Saget’s characters being the central focus. Later, children were added to the script and “Full House” became the beloved sitcom of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
During the show’s first table read, Stamos began to worry that his character would be overshadowed by the children. “Jodie Sweetin, who plays Stephanie, reads her lines, and people are dying laughing, I mean screaming. I was like, ‘What’s happening here?'” he recalled. “You couldn’t even hear my lines, they were laughing so hard at her.”
Stamos rang up his agent after the table read and told him, “Get me the (expletive) off this show!”
He eventually embraced being Uncle Jesse. “There was no central character on that show, I realized. The central character was love,” he said.
The show revolved around single father Danny Tanner (Saget) raising his daughters D.J. (Candance Cameron), Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and Michelle (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) with the help of his brother-in-law Jesse Katsopolis (Stamos) and best friend Joey Gladstone (Coulier).
“Full House” ran from 1987 to 1995 and the spinoff “Fuller House” had five seasons released on Netflix from 2016 to 2020.
Jodie Sweetin was the first person cast on “Full House,” writer-producer-director Jeff Franklin shared on Coulier’s debut “Full House Rewind” podcast episode on Friday.
Franklin similarly recalled there being nearly 100 people in the room for the first table read. “They were all there to see Stamos, I think,” he said. However, “Jodie just stole the whole thing” with her sense of humor.
Coulier remembered leaving the table read with Stamos, who told him, “The whole show’s gonna be (Jodie). We can’t do this.”
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“I learned this much later that he was so upset about having to play second fiddle to these really funny kids, that he went out and called his agent and said, ‘This is a mistake. Get me off this show,'” Franklin said.
The “Full House” creator added that Stamos eventually “made his peace with the fact that he’s working with the kids and animals and being upstaged constantly.”
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