Full House Star John Stamos Had the Olsen Twins Fired When They Were Just 11 Months Old

How ruthless is show business? Ruthless enough that not even infants are safe from some serious backstabbing. Case in point: Full House. In a new statement about the beloved TV sitcom, former Full House star John Stamos admits to firing his co-stars, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, when they were both just 11 months old. 

“We’re doing the scene. Joey and I were changing the baby, right? And Danny [Bob Saget] is gone and said, ‘Take care of the kids.’ ‘Yeah, we got it. We got it,’” Stamos told Josh Peck’s Good Guys podcast. “So, we’re carrying the baby downstairs and we take her in the kitchen and we hose her down. And she was screaming. Both of them. They wanted to be anywhere else but there, and so did I. They were 11 months old, and god bless them. They kept switching: ‘This one’s not gonna cry.’ I couldn’t deal with it. And I said, ‘This is not gonna work.’ and I screamed it 10 times. I said, ‘Get rid of them, I can’t work like this.’ And so they got rid of them.”

The Karmic joke ended up coming back around to Stamos, after Full House fired its infant stars and hired replacements: 

“They bring on these two redheaded kids… I’m sure their parents loved them and thought they were attractive… It had nothing to do with [them being] redheaded, but they weren’t attractive.” 

Things went further south over the next days, as filming with the replacement babies turned out worse than working with the Olsens. Ultimately, Stamos found himself saying “‘Bring the Olsens back! These kids are terrible.’… It was a day or something; we tried the other kids, it didn’t work.” 

While Stamos has confessed to firing the Olsens before, it’s still pretty crazy to know that the Olsen Twins’ rise to breakout fame in the ’90s and ’00s hinged on the fact that they were somehow better(?) infant actors than other babies working(!) at the time. But, as history goes, the twins got their second shot at Full House and nailed it. 

The Olsen Twins have stepped back from the spotlight since they’ve grown into adults; Neither girl has appeared onscreen since the late 2000s/early 2010s, and they declined to be part of the Fuller House sequel series. Mary-Kate and Ashley did, however, release a statement last year, when their onscreen dad Bob Sagat passed away: 

“Bob was the most loving, compassionate, and generous man. We are deeply saddened that he is no longer with us but know that he will continue to be by our side to guide us as gracefully as he always has. We are thinking of his daughters, wife, and family and are sending our condolences.”