Everything John Posey Has Said About Missing Out on “Full House” Role After Unaired Pilot
Everything John Posey Has Said About Missing Out on “Full House” Role After Unaired Pilot
Virginia ChamleeMon, June 29, 2026 at 7:15 PM UTC
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John Posey, left, and Bob SagetCredit: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty; Mike Coppola/Getty -
John Posey originally filmed the Full House pilot as Danny Tanner before Bob Saget replaced him
Saget was the producers' first choice but was initially unavailable due to hosting CBS' The Morning Program
Posey later revealed he was surprised by the recasting but went on to have a successful acting career
Long before Bob Saget became America's favorite TV dad, John Posey had already filmed the Full House pilotas Danny Tanner.
Jodie Sweetin recently spoke about filming the first episode of the show with Saget, telling Taboo's Comics & Kicks, that the show's very first episode featured actor Posey in the role, as Saget was at the time under contract to host CBS' The Morning Program. The episode featuring Posey never aired, and Saget quickly replaced him before Full House debuted on ABC.
"We started doing the show and we'd shot an entire pilot actually with a different — with John Posey, who was a lovely human being and very sweet and wonderful," Sweetin shared. "But Bob was the first choice for Danny."
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Bob Saget in the "Full House" Pilot on ABCCredit: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content/Getty
Following Sweetin's recent recollection of working with Posey on the unaired episode, here's a look at what he has shared about being replaced before the series premiered.
Posey Landed the Role After an ABC Exec Saw Him Perform in Atlanta
Speaking to Yahoo in 2014, Posey spoke about how he first landed the role on Full House, saying, "I was part of a pretty successful comedy group — Comedia — in Atlanta, and somebody from ABC was in town."
After the ABC staffer saw the show, they approached Posey about a new television series in development and he flew to Los Angeles to read for the project.
"And then of course the pilot they gave me right away was Full House," Posey told Yahoo. "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. They were obligated to other shows. How you go from those guys to me is kind of a mystery, because we couldn't be more different."
Posey Shot the Pilot with the Cast — But Said He Has 'No Idea' If He Was Good
Speaking to Yahoo, Posey said, "In all honesty, if somebody were to ask me now, I have no idea whether I was good in that pilot or not. It was all very new to me."
Posey said that, at the time, he was used to "Saturday Night Live-type, Second City comedy, very physical comedy, and Full House was very, you know, sweet and different and unlike the sitcoms that I was watching when I was growing up, which was All in the Family and Chico and the Man and Welcome Back, Kotter, things that were very cynical. This show was quite different."
"So I can't say that I was the most experienced guy on the set, plus you're holding a baby in your arms the whole time, so I was learning about this, going along but I, overall I thought everything was pretty decent," Posey told Yahoo. "And the show went. [ABC] picked it up with me, and everything was fine, until about a month or so later when I heard otherwise."
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Posey Found Out He Had Been Replaced After Getting a Message on His Pager
Speaking to Yahoo, Posey recalled, "I was in Mississippi. My pager went off. I've got a trailer full of stuff. I'm driving back thinking, 'We're going to get to work soon on this new show.' And I get a phone call, go to the phone booth, as we used to do in those days, returned the call, and it was my agent saying, 'I don't know what's going on, but for some reason they're testing Bob Saget.' "
"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," Posey said. "I guess something opened up for him. 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."
Sweetin offered a similar take on the situation in her recent podcast interview, saying of Saget: "And so when he was no longer doing the show that was conflicting with Full House, we reshot the entire pilot which Jeff Franklin had to fight for so hard because that's a lot of money."
"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.' And he was right," Sweetin added.
Posey Kept In Touch With Some of the Cast Members, But Never Met Saget
Speaking to Yahoo, Posey said of Saget, who died in 2022, "I've never spoken to Bob. John Stamos is a friend. Dave Coulier is a friend. I know that the young girls were all a little bit shattered when it happened, because we developed a pretty good relationship. Candace [Cameron Bure], she was very upset that [it] fell apart. It was hard for the kids to have to do this all over again with somebody they didn't know."
He added that he never realized he might be replaced when shooting the pilot, saying, "It seemed like everything was fine. We shot it. I learned as much as I could in a short period of time. And next thing I know... 'Hey, you're no longer employed.' "
Saget portrayed Tanner — a widowed father of three — on Full House from 1987 until 1995, starring alongside Sweetin, Barber, the Olsens, John Stamos, Dave Coulier and Lori Loughlin.
In 2016, Saget and the rest of the cast reprised their roles for Netflix's Fuller House, with the late actor appearing in 10 episodes of the spinoff, which ended in 2020.
Posey has gone on to have a long acting career himself, with guest spots in episodes of television series including Better Call Saul and MTV's Teen Wolf, which starred his son, Tyler Posey.
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