Full House alum Jodie Sweetin shared details of filming the show’s pilot with a different actor in the role of Danny Tanner.
John Posey played the family patriarch in the original unaired pilot. However, according to Sweetin, Bob Saget was always creator Jeff Franklin’s first choice for the part.
“We shot an entire pilot, actually, with a different dad … with John Posey, who was a lovely human being and very sweet and wonderful,” Sweetin, 44, recalled on a recent episode of Black Eyed Peas rapper Taboo’s “Comics & Kicks” podcast.
While Franklin hoped to cast Saget, the late comedian was already committed to a role as an on-air contributor on CBS’ The Morning Program. Thankfully, Saget eventually became free and the episode was reshot.
“Bob was the first choice for Danny, and so when he was no longer doing the show that was conflicting with Full House, we reshot the entire pilot,” Sweetin said. “Jeff Franklin had to fight so hard because that’s a lot of money. He was like, ‘I just know it. I just know this is who we need as the dad.’ And he was right.”
Sweetin played Stephanie Tanner, the middle daughter of Danny, in the hit ABC sitcom from 1987 to 1995. She later reprised the role in Netflix’s Fuller House.
Posey, meanwhile, went on to have a successful acting career, even appearing in several episodes of MTV’s Teen Wolf with his son, Tyler Posey.
John, 70, recalled the casting process for Danny in a 2014 interview with Yahoo, explaining, “From what I was told, they were looking all over the country for people and couldn’t find a guy, although I later found out that Bob Saget and Paul Reiser were the two guys they were after first, and they were both unavailable. They were obligated to other shows. How you go from those guys to me is kind of a mystery, because we couldn’t be more different.”
“But anyway, they did, and we shot it. And, you know, in all honesty, if somebody were to ask me now, I have no idea whether I was good in that pilot or not,” he added.
After the show was picked up for a full season, Posey said he learned that ABC was testing Saget for Danny, and the role was recast.
“I’ve never spoken to Bob,” Posey said of Saget, who died at age 65 in 2022, at the time. “John Stamos is a friend. Dave Coulier is a friend. I know that the young girls were all a little bit shattered when it happened because we developed a pretty good relationship. Candace [Cameron Bure], she was very upset that [it] fell apart. It was hard for the kids to have to do this all over again with somebody they didn’t know.”
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