It’s no secret that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the designers behind high-end fashion brand The Row, aren’t big fans of fame and have shunned their shared childhood roles for decades as Michelle Tanner on the much-loved sitcom. Full house. But according to John Stamos, the disengagement could have happened even sooner: This week, he said he was trying to get his then-baby lead actors fired.
On Josh Peck’s “Good Guys” podcast, Stamos filmed a now iconic scene for the show with Dave Coulier, who plays Joey Gladstone, while Stamos and Coulier change Michelle’s diapers to Mary-Kate and then 11-month-old. Ashley was both crying uncontrollably.
“We’re filming the scene,” Stamos told Peck, “Joey and I were changing the baby, right? And Danny went and said, ‘Take care of the kids.’ Yeah, we got it. We got it. So, we carry the baby downstairs and take him to the kitchen and hose off. And she was screaming. Both of these. They wanted to be somewhere other than there – so I did.
Watching the scene backwards, you can see why the babies are upset: Coulier sprays him with water, Stamos lifts a bottomless baby into the air, and a studio audience laughs in the background.
Stamos then swings one of the baby Olsens around the kitchen counter and holds his exposed butt in front of an oscillating fan, then spins in a circle as Coulier wraps baby Michelle in paper towels. That would be too much for an adult artist, let alone a baby!
“They were 11 months old and god bless them. They kept changing: ‘This is not going to cry.’ I couldn’t handle it,” Stamos told Peck. “I said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ So they got rid of them. They’re bringing these two redheaded kids… I’m sure their parents loved them and thought they were attractive… it’s only been a few days and bring back the ‘Olsen’! These kids are terrible.’”
Given how the Olsens were deliberately pulled back from the spotlight after a total overexposure early in their lives, there’s something truly shocking about this anecdote from Stamos: If she had found redhead dolls attractive, perhaps Them Would Ashley and Mary-Kate have been exposed to their traumatic Hollywood childhoods instead?
Adria Later, Mary-Kate and Ashley’s, “The studio teacher’s responsibility is simply to sit back and make sure baby is not put under any lights that could fall on their head, and to make sure there is a clean space for them to rest.” Full house teacher on set, said Washington post in 1991
The twins’ father told to mail in the same article, their daughters were “almost like chimpanzees when they were little.” Maybe we should ban child acting?