Bob Saget Wasn’t the Original Choice for Danny Tanner on ‘Full House’

The Big Picture

• Bob Saget was not the original choice for Danny Tanner in Full House; John Posey was cast in the unaired pilot.
• Saget was fired from another show, which opened up the opportunity for him to be cast as Danny Tanner.
• Despite his clean image on Full House, Bob Saget had a dirtier side that came out in his stand-up comedy.

More than any other type of TV series, sitcoms get to us emotionally, making the characters seem like part of our family. Whether we watched these shows when they first aired, or relive them in syndication and streaming decades later, we keep going back because of how good they made us feel. We all have our favorite sitcoms and our favorite characters. Every trope is there, from the funny sidekick, the cool kid, the stuck up kid, and the hilarious scene-stealing supporting character. At the top is the TV dad. It’s through this character that the show usually finds its focus, whether it be the chaos of Al Bundy (Ed O’Neill) in Married… with Children, or the wholesome goodness of Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) in The Andy Griffith Show. The greatest TV dad, however, is none other than Danny Tanner from Full House. When Bob Saget shockingly passed away in January 2022, it felt like we had lost a member of our own family. If history had gone a little differently, his is a name we may have never known, because another actor played Danny Tanner first.

John Posey Played Danny Tanner in the ‘Full House’ Pilot

It’s hard to imagine anyone else but Bob Saget as Danny Tanner in Full House, but he wasn’t the first choice for the role. Another actor was actually cast and filmed an unaired pilot with the likes of John Stamos, Dave Coulier, and Candace Cameron. The distinction for the first Danny Tanner goes to a man named John Posey. In the late 80s, Posey, an actor and screenwriter, was part of a comedy group in Atlanta called Comedia. In 2014, in an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Posey said one night an ABC exec caught their show and asked Posey to come to Los Angeles to meet the network’s comedy development people. Posey said:

“The pilot they gave me right away was Full House. And from what I was told, they were looking all over the country for people and couldn’t find a guy, although I later found out that Bob Saget and Paul Reiser were the two guys they were after first, and they were both unavailable.”

Posey said he doesn’t know if he was good or not in the pilot he shot for Full House because its sweeter themes were different from the cynical comedy he was familiar with. He had to have been good enough, however, because ABC picked up Full House with John Posey as Danny Tanner. A month later, though, it all went wrong.

Bob Saget Was Fired for Making Crude Jokes on ‘The Morning Program’

John Posey told Yahoo that one day he got a call from his agent telling him that ABC was now testing Bob Saget for the role of Danny Tanner on Full House. Posey then learned that Saget had been ABC’s first choice, but he was busy on a CBS show called The Morning Program. Posey said:

“Maybe he was fired from something, I think, and suddenly he was available. And I guess the executive producer talked ABC into allowing him to re-shoot. So that was the end of that.”

Bob Saget had indeed been fired from The Morning Program. If you had heard the story of why he was fired in the early 90s, you might not have believed it, but to hear it today, it checks out perfectly with who Saget was and his brand of humor outside of the wholesomeness we knew him for. Later in his life, Saget talked about what happened on expediTIously with Tip T.I. Harris. He said:

“They said I was too hot for morning TV because I said some dirty shit, but I didn’t mean to… The host, Mariette Hartley, said to me, ‘Are you a type-A personality?’ And I said, ‘Yes, but I’m working on my A-Ness.'”

Saget was thrilled that he got to say “anus” on morning television, but when he was told to go back to his dressing room by Hartley, he knew he was done.

Bob Saget Was the Perfect Danny Tanner

It’s ironic that Bob Saget, who we always thought to be this clean comedian because of Full House, only got the series because his dirtier side had accidentally come out. If he wasn’t making butt jokes on network TV in the morning, would we even know who he is today? Would Full House be something we remember? John Posey told Yahoo that ABC completely reshot the pilot with Saget. He said it was hard on young Candace Cameron especially because she was scared of having to work with another actor she didn’t know. Posey never became the household name that Saget was. He spoke to Yahoo about his pride in being a blue collar actor, how it meant a lot to him to have appeared on shows like Seinfeld and NewsRadio, or to work with Tom Hanks on From the Earth to the Moon, and he’s even still friends with John Stamos and Dave Coulier. He was able to laugh about the Full House experience, saying:

“It’s all been good. It would have been easier if I had stayed with Full House, because then I’d never have to work again. I’d just write a check and everything would be OK.”

It was a missed opportunity for John Posey, but we can all agree that Bob Saget was the perfect Danny Tanner. Yeah, he’d show us later in his life with his stand-up comedy that he was hilariously filthy in the best way, temporarily hurting his image of this great TV dad, but that’s how good of an actor he was. Watch Full House, and you’d think, maybe that Dave Coulier or John Stamos is a little bit raunchy behind the scenes, but never Saget. Danny Tanner was the epitome of wholesomeness, a man going through the worst trauma, having lost his wife, who picked up the pieces, and with his family helping him, was able to be there for his kids — teaching them, protecting them, and making them laugh. He was the ideal TV dad, teaching and protecting us, and, of course, making us laugh. Bob Saget made us laugh outside of Full House too, and with words way more shocking than “anus.”

Full House is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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