Why Bob Saget Didn’t Play Danny Tanner In The Original Full House Pilot

As far as “Full House” creator Jeff Franklin was concerned, there was no other actor for the role of squeaky clean TV dad Danny Tanner than crass comedian Bob Saget. Still an up-and-comer at the time, Saget had been featured in HBO’s 9th annual “Young Comedians” special, where he cranked out jokes about wanting to have sex with the entire audience, marrying a child, and undressing in front of little boys — and yet, Franklin said that he had a “gut instinct, from the beginning, that Bob could be one of those classic TV dads.”

Alas, when the sitcom was cast, Saget was committed to CBS’ “The Morning Program.” As a result, John Posey — whose previous credits included the Michael Mann crime thriller “Manhunter” — was tapped to play DJ, Stephanie and Michelle’s father in the original pilot. Then, in a serendipitous turn of events, “The Morning Program” was canceled, and Saget was suddenly available. Franklin managed to persuade ABC to reshoot Posey’s scenes with Saget, and the rest is history.

“I just fought for him as hard as I could,” Franklin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “I said, ‘This is going to make the show so much better. We have to do this.'” And the network listened.

Unfortunately for Posey, it wasn’t until ABC gave “Full House” the greenlight, and the Atlanta-based actor was halfway to Los Angeles, that he received the dreaded call that he was being recast. 

“It was my agent saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but for some reason they’re testing Bob Saget,'” Posey told Yahoo! Entertainment in 2014. “And I said, ‘What are you talking about? Why would they do that?’ I didn’t know at the time that he was the guy that they originally wanted, that he was just unavailable.”

The original Posey-led pilot was kept under lock and key for 18 years. It wasn’t until Season 1 was released on DVD in February 2005, on which the unaired version was included as a bonus feature, that fans of “Full House” were able to see what the TGIF classic would’ve looked like with a different actor in the part.

With Saget, “Full House” would go on to enjoy an eight-season run, from 1987 until 1995. Twenty years later, the original cast (including Saget) returned for the Netflix sequel series “Fuller House,” which ran for five seasons and ended in 2020 — just 18 months before Saget’s untimely passing.