John Stamos is best known for portraying Uncle Jesse in the ABC sitcom Full House. Although Stamos loves the recognition he gets from the show, it wasn’t always like that.
The actor recently opened up about how he initially “hated” the comedy after he realized the show was more family-oriented and not like Bosom Buddies as it was originally pitched.
“Full House was… I hated that show,” Stamos said during an appearance on Hot Ones. “Obviously I ended up loving it but it was sort of pitched to me as Bosom Buddies … with a couple of kids in the background. And as we’re casting I was like, ‘They’re spending a lot of time casting these kids that are going to be in the background.’”
He continued, “We did a table read of it and I was the star coming off of General Hospital … and we sit down and start reading and Jodie Sweetin, who plays Stephanie, starts reading her lines and people are dying laughing — I mean screaming. And I was like, ‘What’s happening here?’ They couldn’t even hear my lines they were laughing so hard.”
Stamos said he ran out to the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel and called his agents tell them to “get me the f**k off this show.” Bob Saget then came along as he was advised by agents to give the show a try.
“I fought it for a long time,” Stamos added. “And then I finally said, ‘What am I doing?’ It’s a beautiful show we built with sweetness and kindness. There was no central character on that show is what I realized. The central character was love and we were the best representation of a loving family, not a normal family. And it was the new normal, now an unconventional family.”
Bosom Buddies was a sitcom from 1980 that starred Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari who pretend to be women in order to be able to afford an apartment. Co-creators Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett would go on to produce Full House in 1987 based on an idea by Jeff Franklin, who also wrote for Bosom Buddies.
Full House ran for eight seasons on ABC. A follow-up spinoff titled Fuller House was picked up by Netflix in 2016 and ran for five seasons.
Watch Stamos’ full appearance on Hot Ones in the video posted below.