John Stamos has recalled a time when he called for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to be cut from Full House.
Stamos played “Uncle” Jesse in the family sitcom, while the young twins shared the role of Michelle Tanner, his niece.
Over the course of the programme’s eight seasons, Michelle became integral to the show and Mary-Kate and Ashley became stars in their own right for their joint portrayal of the precocious child.
In a recent episode of the Good Guys podcast, Stamos detailed how he was responsible for very nearly ending the Olsens’ time on the show prematurely by getting them fired by producers.
Stamos began by explaining that he and castmate Dave Coulier were tasked with changing the then-11-month-old twins’ nappies as part of a scene.
“So, we're carrying the baby downstairs and we take her in the kitchen and we hose her down,” Stamos told show 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.”
Frustrated with the infant twins’ lack of cooperation, Stamos apparently then began to lose his temper and declared that he’d no longer be able to work with the babies.
“They were 11 months old, and God bless them. They kept switching: ‘This one’s not gonna cry.’ I couldn't deal with it.
“And I said, ‘This is not gonna work.’ I screamed at [the producers], ‘I can't work like this.’ And so they got rid of them.”
The Olsens were then replaced by other infants. Yet, days later, when it became apparent that the new babies weren’t an ideal fit, Stamos asked for Mary-Kate and Ashley to return as baby Michelle.
“It was only a few days, and I said, ‘Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible.”
When asked whether the twins knew about their temporary firing, Stamos responded: “They do now.”
The Independent has reached out to a representative for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen for comment.
Full House ran from 1987 to 1995. In 2016, the series was rebooted as Fuller House and ran for five seasons before concluding in 2020.
