Everywhere you look, there’s a face – of someone who means harm. At least, that was the experience shared by Full House stars John Stamos and Jodie Sweetin, who received death threats that prompted then-unprecedented layers of security when filming.
Stamos and Sweetin played uncle and niece from 1987 to 1995 and reprised their roles for five seasons of Netflix’s Fuller House, which wrapped in 2020. When the original ABC series was several seasons deep, both actors received threats of violence and Sweetin was plagued by very nefarious messages that affected her and her family.
John Stamos received unwanted attention when ‘Full House’ became a hit
Upon its premiere, Full House proved itself a consistent success, enough so that it became the flagship program of ABC’s TGIF block by September of ’89. Critical reviews in the early seasons rated it harshly while audiences of the ’80s and ’90s found it a comforting presence on their TVs.
RELATED: John Stamos Almost Quit ‘Full House’ For Fear Of Being Upstaged By Jodie Sweetin
During the show’s cemented popularity in the ’90s, things turned sour for some of the cast.
Stamos joined Sweetin for her and co-star Andrea Barber’s How Rude, Tanneritos! podcast and together they relived some of the more frightening moments from filming. Stamos had actually received death threats, which prompted the crew to set up metal detectors before doing any live taping, something they noted as “unheard of back in the early 90s.”
Fueling these heightened security measures, Stamos revealed, was “some deranged idiot” appearing across the street from Sony, where they were filming. The man approached a member of the production team and asked where Stamos was. The woman asked the man why he needed to know.
“Because I’m going to kill him.”
John Stamos and Jodie Sweetin faced threats behind the scenes
The woman called security and the man quickly made himself scarce, although he did later try calling a “hotline” to find Stamos. On top of metal detectors, there was also an FBI agent tasked with following Stamos “24 hours a day.”
“I was so stupid, because I tried to ditch them,” shared Stamos.
All these heightened security measures noticeably changed the atmosphere around their studio. “I could feel like this nervous energy all throughout backstage,” recalled Barber as they chatted. “And then right before you went out for your intro, John, you did the sign of the cross. And then I think it was Bob [Saget], maybe Dave [Coulier] … who leaned over to you and said, ‘Can I have your parking spot?'”
Unfortunately, plenty of trouble still leaked through regardless. Like Stamos, Sweetin received death threats – hers from men in prison. She also received requests for “specific photos” of her as a child.
“I had someone who was calling the stage… asking for my mom,” she said. “They connected it to my dressing room and they were like, ‘Do you know where your daughter is right now? We have her.”
“Really creepy stuff,” she continued. “I had a bodyguard in New York, because there was a guy that the FBI was following [who] was trying to kidnap me. It’s a weird way to exist.”
Jodie Sweetin and John Stamos needed FBI protection against the death threats leveled against them / ImageCollect