Fuller House feels like home
Reboot has moved beyond the novelty stage and gained its own following
LOS ANGELES — Stage 24 on the Warner Lot — the home of Netflix’s Fuller House — has seen hundreds of studio audiences go through the exercise of laughing through five or six takes at the same joke.
Stage 24 is still best known as the home of Friends, but before that, this homey warehouse was where they filmed the original Full House in the early ’90s.
On this day, the laughers are from as far away as Ireland and Australia, and throughout the U.S. There’s also a group of young Japanese journalists, one of whom began sobbing after having her picture taken with John Stamos.
Yes, the original three guys — Stamos, Dave Coulier and Bob Saget, a.k.a. uncles Jesse and Joey and single-dad Danny Tanner — are still popping into odd episodes of Fuller House.
At this taping, the plot has them celebrating New Year’s with Danny’s grown daughters D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure) and Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin), their spunky, live-in best-friend Kimmy Gibbler (Andrea Barber) and their kids.
But what was once a gimmicky reunion has turned into a premise-flip that seems to have worked.
Fuller House — which unveils a second season on Netflix this week — follows two single moms (widowed DJ and divorced Kimmy), a single sis (Stephanie) and three precocious kids (DJ’s sons Jackson and Max, and Kimmy’s daughter Ramona, played by Michael Campion, Elias Harger and Soni Bringas respectively).
And they’re all living in that same house in San Francisco, left to them by dad Danny, who’s moved to Los Angeles to star in a talk show.
Still missing in action in Season 2 is youngest sister Michelle — because no one named Olsen seems to want to return.
Full House and Fuller House creator Jeff Franklin says the flip was obvious. “This is the mom show,” he says. “It’s not like I had to do a lot of thinking to figure out the premise of this one. We had these three daughters in the old show, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out we should do a show about three women and their kids.”
One big difference is that these three actresses had known each other for more than 20 years.
“When we did first did Full House, those three guys didn’t have instant chemistry,” Franklin admits. “It developed over a year really.
“But these three women grew up together. They have been friends since they were 10 years old . ... I’ve never seen a show hit the ground running with that kind of rapport.”
They had their separate lives, of course. Cameron Bure still acted, married and had kids with NHL star Valeri Bure. After a public struggle with substance abuse (she’s now an addiction activist), Sweetin bounced back, competing on Dancing With the Stars this year. She’s married with two children.
And Barber, a single mom of two, had left the business entirely for academia, earning a master’s degree in women’s studies at England’s University of York and working at Whittier College.
But the past seemed to evaporate, Sweetin recalls, when they were reunited on the set.
And they had to assert their roles as stars of Fuller House. In other words, they’re the grown-ups now.
“At least for me, once that first season aired and fans really got to see what Fuller House was about, I think that’s when it felt like this was our show. I think leading up to it, they were just so excited to see the old cast come back, particularly in that first episode,” says Cameron Bure.
“Then once people really watched the remainder of the series, then it was about these three women and the new kids and all of that new family dynamic.”
As for those drop-ins by the old guys, “We love them, they’re our family,” Sweetin says. “When they come back, it’s like transporting ourselves back in time.”