Plans for a “Full House” spinoff have been in development for six years, “Full House” creator Jeff Franklin revealed to Variety Tuesday night at the Los Angeles premiere of “Fuller House,” Netflix’s reboot of the hit ABC sitcom.
“John Stamos and I were having lunch one day, bemoaning the dearth of family television and thinking, ‘Let’s try to do something,'” said Franklin, who also created “Fuller House.” “It took us about six years to set this thing up. You would think everybody would have jumped at it, it’s such a no-brainer, but we got passes all over town.”
“Fuller House” follows a recently-widowed D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron-Bure) as she moves back into her childhood home in San Francisco to care for her three children. Echoing the household structure of “Full House,” D.J. will raise her children with the help of sister Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and longtime best friend and fellow single mom Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber). “Full House” originals including Stamos, Bob Saget, Dave Coulier and Lori Loughlin all guest star in episodes of the Netflix series.
“I played around with every plotline imaginable,” said Franklin. “I was very reticent to repeat the original premise so blatantly.” He was pleased with the result, which just felt right to him. “We flipped the premise; we flipped the whole series. The Tanners do have some bad luck, but that makes us all root for them.”
For Cameron-Bure, reviving the character of D.J. Tanner was effortless.
“There’s so much of me in her. I think we all bring a lot of ourselves to the characters,” she said. “I didn’t sit around thinking about what she’d been doing until we did ‘Fuller House,’ but it was pretty easy to just pick up right where you left off. For us ladies, it [‘Full House’] was our whole childhood — you don’t forget that.”
Added Sweetin of her role as Stephanie Tanner, “I’ve filled in the blanks of what she’s been doing in the past 20 years in my head, and kind of brought that to who she is today.” Since her pre-teen days on “Full House,” Stephanie has become a well-traveled, aspiring musician, who bares minimal responsibilities.
Coulier, whose character now lives in Las Vegas, said the chemistry between “Fuller House'” cast members will set the stage for a successful reboot series.
“We have amazing chemistry on-screen and off. We really love each other,” he said. “That plays through the dialogue — you can’t fake that.”
Barber also praised the cast’s everlasting chemistry, adding, “You can’t write chemistry like we have, and you can’t write the history that we have. The fact that we’ve been together for almost 30 years is something that we’ve never seen before on any other show,” she said. She also admitted to feeling pressure for her, Cameron-Bure and Sweetin to spearhead the series as successfully as the dynamic trio of Stamos, Saget and Coulier did in “Full House.”
Loughlin, who will guest star as Aunt Becky, admitted to feeling hesitant before the cast reunited to shoot “Fuller House.”
“I had a moment of, ‘Oh, it’s going to be funny to step back in these shoes, I wonder if I can do it?'” she admitted. “But once we all got in the room together and started reading the script, we all fell back into character.
“To have the original creator of the show create the spinoff and then have the original producers of the show produce the spinoff is fantastic,” Loughlin added. “If you loved ‘Full House,’ you’ll really be a fan of ‘Fuller House.’ It doesn’t deviate that much from the original. It’ll feel like comfort food.”
Franklin, Cameron-Bure, Sweetin, Coulier, Barber and Loughlin were joined at the premiere by “Fuller House” co-stars Saget, Stamos, Elias Harger, Michael Campion, Soni Nicole Bringas and Juan Pablo Di Pace, as well as Stamos’ “Grandfathered” co-star Josh Peck and Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos.
“Fuller House” premieres Feb. 26 on Netflix.
