For eight seasons, Bob Saget played Full House's saccharine, do-gooder Danny Tanner, father of the ever-precocious Michelle, as played by twins Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. Saget has also technically played Michelle's father for three seasons on Netflix's Fuller House, but the Olsens haven't ever returned to reprise their daughterly role, even though most of the other former cast members returned in some capacity. And while one might think that Saget would have some dismissive or negative feelings for his former co-stars, he actually respects their decision not to return.
People should do what they want with their lives, and when Shirley Temple stopped doing what she did...People, when they're 9 months old and they get a job...I love them very very much, Ashley and Mary-Kate, and they love what they do. And acting is not what they want to do. So people should do what they want to do.
Bob Saget, who is known for shedding the Danny Tanner persona quite wholeheartedly for his stand-up comedy, is almost surprisingly on Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen's side when it comes to them not wanting to make a Michelle cameo appearance happen on Fuller House. As he put it to Entertainment Tonight, he understands that spending one's childhood on a TV set, not to mention in the public's eye, can lead to a very heavy wariness about going back into that lifestyle as an adult, if even for a short period.
While Full House was a huge success and was a career lynchpin for just about everyone in the cast, the Olsen twins spun that success and expanded it into a mega-million-dollar enterprise. They acted in a slew of theatrical and non-theatrical movies until they were in their late teens, at which point they continued branching out with their fashion empire and other ventures. Mary-Kate has appeared in a handful of projects in the past decade or so, such as Weeds and Beastly, but she is very selective with those roles. And though it almost seemed at times like she would be willing to pop by Fuller House to bring adult Michelle to the masses, she knows it wouldn't be proper unless it was both sisters doing it, and she respects Ashley's decision not to return to acting.
At this point, Full House and Fuller House creator Jeff Frankln and star John Stamos have tried many times to lovingly convince Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to return to this shmaltz-driven universe, with the former giving up the goal earlier this year. Bob Saget, meanwhile, hasn't had his name come up too much when Olsen conversations have happened, so it's possible he's always had his "c'est la vie" attitude towards their potential return. A father knows what's up, even if he's just a fictional dad.
The first two and a half seasons of Fuller House are available to stream in full on Netflix, with the second half of Season 3 coming in December 2017. To see all the other shows that will be arriving on Netflix and elsewhere in the coming months, head to our Netflix 2017 schedule and our fall TV premiere schedule.
