The door will soon close for good at “Fuller House.”
The Netflix sequel to the long-running ABC sitcom “Full House” will return for a fifth and final season on Friday. And for much of the cast, parting ways is bittersweet.
Candace Cameron Bure, who plays D.J. Tanner-Fuller on the series, said that nearly everyone got emotional when the cast wrapped production in mid-November.
“There were so many tears. It was tough,” Bure told HuffPost at Build Series. “A lot of people say jobs come and go. This particular show is more than a job for us. It’s really been more of a family and it has meant more to us than a typical job.”
That’s because most of the actors from the original show came back, at least to some extent, when “Fuller House” launched in 2016. Like Bure, Jodie Sweetin (Stephanie Tanner) and Andrea Barber (Kimmy Gibler) returned as main cast members. Original series stars Bob Saget (Danny Tanner), Dave Coulier (Joey Gladstone) and John Stamos (Jesse Katsopolis) made recurring appearances. Lori Loughlin periodically showed up as Aunt Becky, although she is not expected to appear in the final season given the charges she faces in the college admissions scandal.
Bure said it’s been such a “wonderful gift” to do the show a second time around.
“There was a writer on our show that had said, ‘You’re lucky enough if lightning strikes once. You’re really lucky if lightning strikes twice. But to have it strike twice with your two best friends is pretty amazing.’ And that’s what’s happened with ‘Full House,’ ‘Fuller House’ and really getting to spend every day with my best friends Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber,” she said. “I absolutely love the multi-cam world and over-the-top comedy. It’s really fun. I love being goofy and silly. It’s a dream job and one that I’ll never forget and hold dear memories.”
Season 5 will pick up where Season 4 left off. Fans may remember that last season wrapped with Kimmy giving birth to Stephanie and Jimmy’s baby after offering to be the couple’s surrogate in Season 3. Bure said that Season 5 won’t disappoint.
“Get out the tissues ’cause there are more tears in this season than the other seasons,” she said. “And that’s also because there’s a lot of life lessons with the kids and the parents, lots of those violin-playing music moments. But there’s a lot of comedy and song and dance and silly hijinks.”
It’s even more special for the cast because the revival almost didn’t happen.
“A lot of people think that this show was on a whim,” Bure said. “Like someone asked us, ‘Do you want to reboot ‘[Full] House’? And we all went, ‘Yay!’”
But that’s not the case. It took a lot of time and energy to get “Fuller House” off the ground.
“We went out and we developed the show and then pitched it to every network, and they all turned us down. And Netflix was the last one we pitched to and they said yes,” Bure recalled. “And so we knew the fanbase that we had for 30 years and we really were certain that if the show was done right ― which we knew it would be because it was the original creator and executive producer [Jeff Franklin] of ‘Full House’ that was going to do it.”
Looking back, Bure said she’s really happy with the way the second series turned out and how the storylines evolved.
“I was delighted at where D.J. was or is as an adult ― that she was a smart woman, a veterinarian and that [she] became as much of a clean freak and controlling as Danny Tanner. I just thought it was funny. And I liked that I turned into not quite the Joey Gladstone character but more of the dad and that I got to be the dorky mom at times.”
Having played the character on and off for three decades, Bure said there’s no doubt that she injects a piece of herself into the role.
“Every part of her is a part of me to an extent,” Bure said. “She’s a little bit more over the top and goofy. But those things have to come from me to some degree. She’s just like that extra version of Candace.”
In addition to “Fuller House,” Bure can be seen in a new holiday film on Hallmark called “Christmas Town.”
Watch the full Build Series interview with Candace Cameron Bure below.
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