John Posey was originally cast as the ABC family sitcom’s lead, though Bob Saget quickly replaced Posey, while Pamela Tanner’s death was written to happen before the show made it to air
Can Full House fans point out what’s wrong in this photo?
Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber shared a never-before-seen photo of the Tanner family originally casted to play Danny Tanner and his late wife, Pamela Tanner, in the hit sitcom’s pilot episode.
“No need to adjust your phones – here it is: a shot from the first unaired pilot of Full House. Things were…a little different,” read the caption for a photo posted to their How Rude, Tanneritos! podcast Instagram account. “Can you imagine this version of the show?”
Though the role of Danny Tanner was eventually given to Bob Saget, John Posey starred in the show’s pilot episode as the late actor was under contract to host CBS’ The Morning Program. Posey’s episode never aired and Saget quickly replaced him before Full House’s debut on ABC.
The photo featured Posey standing next to an unnamed actress portraying his wife Pamela Tanner for a family portrait that includes Sweetin (Stephanie Tanner), Candace Cameron Bure (D.J. Tanner) and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (Michelle Tanner).
As Saget portrayed the father of three on Full House from the fall of 1987 through May 1995, he became a beloved figure in television and helped the iconic sitcom become a hit series alongside the Olsens, Bure, Sweetin, Barber, John Stamos, Dave Coulier and Lori Loughlin.
In 2016, Saget and the rest of the cast reprised their roles for Netflix’s Fuller House. For his part, Saget appeared in 10 episodes of the spinoff, which ended in 2020.
Saget wasn’t the only person on Full House who almost had someone else portray their role.
During an appearance on Josh Peck’s Good Guys podcast in April 2023, Stamos revealed that he nearly got the Olsen twins fired from the show at 11 months old, following a rough day on set. As Stamos explained, the Olsens were crying during filming, which led him to grow impatient with their behavior.
“I said, ‘This is not going to work, guys,’ and I screamed it 10 times,” Stamos said. “I said, ‘Get rid of them, I can’t work like this.'”
After the producers briefly hired “two red-headed kids” who were seemingly not as cute as Mary-Kate and Ashley — “I’m sure their parents loved them and thought they were attractive,” Stamos joked — he shared that the Olsen sisters were welcomed back to the show.
“I said, ‘Bring the Olsens back, these kids are terrible!'” Stamos said. “It was a day or something, we tried the other kids, it didn’t work.”
Over the years, the Full House cast has been vocal about their tight bond — and it only strengthened following Saget’s sudden death in January 2022 at age 65.
“This may sound kind of sappy, but we really do love each other,” Coulier told E! News in February 2022. “We’ve been through everything together — births, deaths, marriages, divorces, our shows being picked up and canceled. We’re a real family on and off camera.”
As for a potential reboot one day, Stamos and Coulier have made it clear that while they would love to do something, it would be difficult to return without Saget.
“It’s just not the same without him,” Stamos said. “There’s something missing, there’s a piece missing. We’re doing a lot of tributes. I did that Netflix tribute [June’s Dirty Daddy: The Bob Saget Tribute], which was beautiful, I thought.”
“Every chance I get, I talk about him. If we’re real quiet, we could hear him complaining right now that I don’t talk about him enough,” he added. “We’ll continue to do tributes to him, but I don’t know about a Full House one, though.”
