Bob Saget talks 'Fuller House,' pitches idea for 'Fullest House'

Come Friday, Netflix will have mercy on Full House fans: The streaming service is finally pulling back the curtains on Fuller House. Critics, as you may have noticed, have been far from kind to this 13-episode reboot of the sugary sitcom Full House, which centers on widowed mother D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure), though Millennials aching for a hit of ’90s nostalgia have been clamoring to peek inside the new House. So EW asked Bob Saget, what should viewers expect?

“I think they should expect Full House,” declares the man who starred as that show’s warm-hearted, goofy, neat-freak patriarch, Danny Tanner, and who makes multiple guest appearances in Fuller House. “To me, it’s as close to what it was. It’s really the same type of themes. I mean, the basis of the show is Candace is a single mom and needs help raising her three sons. So there you go. They went and flipped the whole damn thing, didn’t they?” And then some, enlisting sister Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and best friend Kimmy (Andrea Barber) to help D.J., much like John Stamos’ Jesse and Dave Coulier’s Joey assisted Danny in raising his three daughters. “I think they executed the concept very well,” Saget continues. “It feels like you’re watching the old show. But it doesn’t feel like you’re watching something retro. You’re not watching The Brady Bunch Movie with fake wigs and stuff. You’re watching everybody now.”

The Fuller House premiere contains a fair amount of introductions to new characters and even more re-introductions of old ones, cautions Saget. “There were a lot of characters to serve in the first episode — I think there were 90,” he deadpans. “That first episode is nine hours long.”

Did he have any reservations about reopening something that was closed more than 20 years ago? “It was something to think about, because I wanted to know how they were doing it,” he admits to EW. “John [Stamos], and Jeff Franklin, and Bob Boyett definitely wanted the integrity of it to be there and not to smear the legacy. It’s so funny to take it so seriously, but it needed to be taken seriously, and you didn’t want to disappoint the fans, and I really do think most people will not be disappointed by it. The work of Candace, and Jodie, and Andrea is just fantastic, and they’re the tentpoles of that show.” He sums up the similarity of Fuller House to Full House with another joke: “The main difference between the show of past and present is that there’s an “-ER” at the end of it, and the good news is none of the characters wound up in one.”

Saget says he was reminded of his fondness for the original show the minute he stepped foot in the new House. “When I walked in and saw the set… It’s like going back to your old house and everything is the way it used to be,” he marvels. “It’s just a very special thing and a very unusual thing and something that doesn’t happen in many people’s lives. I guess — and it’s so funny, but I always make a Star Trek reference — the first time that Shatner walked onto the bridge of the set 10 years after that show went off the air. This was not Star Trek. (Laughs.) This is Full House. But San Francisco, that painted lady brownstone is impossible. I mean, it’s, like, 9,000 square feet inside a 1,200-square-foot space. It’s magical.”

With the resurrection of the Tanners grabbing headlines, Saget has high hopes for the future of the show. “What we’re expecting it to do is be so beloved by the fans that later there will be a Fullest House, which will be the children of the new kids on the show,” he quips. “And I will come out of Cryovac cave. [You know] how aliens sleep for a thousand years? They’ll just open some thing, and I’ll still be there. I’ll be able to do it. I can do it from a nursing home. I don’t care. I will never let the legacy be tarnished.”

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