The actress who played Kimmy Gibbler reflected on the experience on the latest episode of her rewatch podcast
Growing up on TV made for some uncomfortable moments for Full House’s Andrea Barber.
On the latest episode of their podcast How Rude, Tanneritos!, Barber, 47, and co-host Jodie Sweetin, 42, unpacked one such moment from the beloved ABC sitcom’s third season.
As the pair discussed, the episode, “Back to School Blues,” finds Barber and Candace Cameron Bure’s characters, Kimmy Gibbler and D.J. Tanner, starting junior high and struggling to fit in with their older, more popular peers. So, the tween besties decide to give themselves a very ’80s makeover, complete with teased hair, lots of makeup, fishnet stockings and mini-dresses fit for a Whitesnake video.
Barber’s character, however takes it a step further by padding her bra.
“I was dying when I watched that,” Sweetin said on the podcast. “Hilarious. Ridiculous. What are your thoughts on it today?”
Barber replied that she was “mortified.”
“This is a core memory,” Barber continued. “I was pretty flat at that age, which is not a big deal. That’s very normal. But then when they wanted to — like okay, they wanted me to wear falsies, but then, of course, the joke’s gotta work. So, I had, like, producers coming up to me in between takes and giving notes to wardrobe saying, ‘We need it stuffed more. We need it bigger.’ And that was mortifying to have men looking at my boobs.”
Sweetin noted that she had some problems with the way Barber and Bure, who were both 13 when the episode aired, were dressed while rewatching the scene.
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“It is a storyline that’s not, like, made up. It is exactly what kids do. My kids do it. You know, every generation goes through different, like, oh, it’s a miniskirt, it’s a crop top, it’s a, you know, baggy pants and whatever. Like, it’s always something that they’re trying to do,” the mom of two said. “But, yeah, I definitely like, when I watched that scene, that was all I could think of was like, ‘Oh my god.’ Because, you know, like, it’s just pointing out something that you know is already very obvious in your real life that now you have to deal with outside of the joke you’re making on the show.”
“The joke’s funny in the scene, but then after that scene, you have to go and exist in the world with everyone having seen that joke,” Sweetin continued. “Which when you’re an adult, you don’t care. When you’re a kid, oh my god.”
Barber said she was “beet red” rewatching the episode, and reiterated how uncomfortable she was at the time having the show’s producers discuss the size of her breasts.
“I don’t think we needed it,” she said of the padding. “I think they got the point across with the fishnets and the tight skirts and the crazy, you know, the wild teased hair. I think that was enough. We didn’t need the falsies as well.”
“I keep thinking, ‘What if it was my daughter, my 13-year-old, out there and where men are talking about the size of her bust?’ ” Barber continued. “I would have a problem with that if I was the mom.”
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“I’m fine now. I wasn’t scarred by it,” she added. But, she said, “I’d be like, ‘Guys, this is — change the joke. There’s a different — there’s a better joke out there.’ ”
Sweetin noted that she doesn’t think the scene was intentionally inappropriate. “It was a very normal storyline of stuff that we all knew that, you know, kids go through at this age,” she explained. “But, yeah, definitely looking back on it now, you’re like, ‘I don’t know that I love that.’ ”
“No,” Barber agreed. “Didn’t love it. And that memory has stuck with me.”
