Have mercy! Fuller House makes its long-awaited Netflix launch on Friday, February 26, and cast members Candace Cameron Bure (D.J. Tanner-Fuller), Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie Tanner) and Andrea Barber (Kimmy Gibbler) spoke with Us Weekly exclusively to reveal what the mood was like on the set — and to explain the joke that they ad-libbed about the absent Olsen twins!
The series is a reboot of the popular ABC sitcom Full House, which ran for eight seasons before bowing out in May 1995. Fuller House landed a 13-episode pickup and centers on D.J., who is recently widowed and raising three sons. Her sister Stephanie and pal Kimmy move into her San Francisco home to help raise the kids.
Returning to the original set where they previously filmed scenes for the Tanners’ abode proved to be an emotional experience for the cast after so many years away.
“I was so overwhelmed,” Cameron Bure tells Us. “I cried at different sets when I saw them. There’s just so many memories that are brought back, so it was really emotional. And it was for the first two weeks, until I finally got settled in. And then it just became a part of me.”
A number of familiar faces will make frequent guest appearances on the new series, including Bob Saget (Danny Tanner), John Stamos (Jesse Katsopolis), Lori Loughlin (Rebecca Donaldson-Katsopolis) and Dave Coulier (Joey Gladstone), and the guys in particular enjoyed cutting up during the shoot.
“That first pilot episode was chaos,” Cameron Bure admits with a laugh about everyone’s difficulty staying focused. “It took forever — it was ridiculous.” Barber agrees, saying that it was “hard to stay focused!”
“At some point, we’re like, ‘We have to work so we can go home,'” Cameron Bure continues. And Sweetin adds, “Totally. We were like, ‘You guys have nowhere to be — we’ve got little ones now!'” (Cameron Bure is mom to Natasha, 17, Lev, 16, and Maksim, 14; Sweetin has Zoie, 7, and Beatrix, 5; Barber has Tate, 11, and Felicity, 8.)
Not every Full House cast member joined in on the new version’s fun, as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — who played Michelle Tanner in their much-younger years — do not appear. The pilot episode nods self-referentially to this, with the characters explaining that Michelle is in New York City to develop her fashion career, followed by everyone looking directly at the camera. This is a not-too-subtle allusion to the Olsen twins’ real lives, as both reside in the Big Apple, where they head up such fashion lines as The Row and Elizabeth and James.
“That actually wasn’t written in the script!” Cameron Bure says about the look into the camera. “We just sort of decided to do it for the writers and producers as we did our run-through. But it was so funny and so poignant that they kept it in! I mean, it’s a fun poke!”
Sweetin concurs that the joke was not “meant with any sort of malintent or anything. I think one of the things that I really like about Fuller House is, we always acknowledge who we are and what it is and what the legacy is, and we never take ourselves too seriously. I think that was one of those moments where we were like, ‘OK, we know — let’s put it out there and get it over with.'”
For more from the ladies, pick up the latest issue of Us Weekly, on stands now!
Fuller House‘s 13 episodes are available for streaming on Netflix on Friday, February 26.
