Full House Almost Didn't Have Bob Saget As Danny Tanner — But Luckily It All Worked Out
"Full House" would not have been the same without the iconic Danny Tanner. The sweet, dorky, always-there-for-a-good-talk dad of three girls was played by the late Bob Saget, who tragically died in January 2022. Saget brought a warmth and genuine care to the series, which ran from 1987 to 1995. And while the casting was perfect, Saget almost didn't get the part — and the show as we know it would have never existed.
Jodie Sweetin, who played Danny's middle daughter Stephanie in the series, opened up about the last-minute change to get Saget on the series in a June 23, 2026, interview on the "Taboo's Comics & Kicks" podcast. She revealed that the "Full House" pilot was originally shot with actor John Posey as Danny. "But we started doing the show and we'd shot an entire pilot actually with a different dad — with John Posey, who was a lovely human being and very sweet and wonderful," Sweetin shared on the podcast. "But Bob was the first choice for Danny."
At the time, Saget was supposed to host "The Morning Program" on CBS, but that fell through and Saget got the role of Danny instead. Sweetin explained that show creator Jeff Franklin got ABC to agree to reshooting the pilot episode with Saget as Danny. "And he was like, 'I just know it. I just know this is who we need as the dad. This is going to be it,'" Sweetin said. "And he was right."
Some of the Full House cast members were originally upset by John Posey's recasting
John Posey, best known for his work in shows like "Better Call Saul," "How to Get Away with Murder," and "Teen Wolf", opened up about getting fired from "Full House" in a 2014 interview with Yahoo! Posey revealed that his agent broke the news while he was driving to Los Angeles with a moving trailer to begin filming. Initially, the recasting was hard on some of the other "Full House" cast members who were expecting to work with him, especially the young actors playing Danny's daughters. Although Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were just babies at the time, Candace Cameron Bure and Jodie Sweetin were old enough to know what was happening.
"I know that the young girls were all a little bit shattered when it happened, because we developed a pretty good relationship," Posey told the outlet. He mentioned that Bure was especially disappointed by the recasting and added, "It was hard for the kids to have to do this all over again with somebody they didn't know."
Still, it all worked out in the end, and now, seeing the "Full House" theme song with Posey as Danny Tanner uploaded to YouTube feels off. Saget remained close to the "Full House" cast members throughout the years, and some of the series' stars reunited at what would have been Saget's 70th birthday in May 2026 to celebrate his life. In the June 2026 "Taboo's Comics & Kicks" podcast appearance, Sweetin revealed how she bonded with the "America's Funniest Home Videos" host, even off set. "I was really close with Bob as a kid," she said. "He had daughters that were my age, and like, I would go spend weekends with him and his kids." It sounds like he was just as much of an involved dad in real life as he was on the show!