John Stamos is sharing the ups and downs of his cherished friendship with Bob Saget — and how his friend seemed “at peace” the last time they were together.
Real friendship isn’t all rainbows and sunbeams — well, the good ones anyway. There are good times and bad, there’s honesty and annoyance, candor and clashes, and Stamos details that realness he had with Saget to the New York Times.
When they starting working together on Full House in 1987, playing brothers-in-law, “our styles completely clashed,” Stamos admitted. “He was a comic. If there was even one person on the set, he had to make them laugh.” The General Hospital star “was, ‘Where is the drama?'”
He said funnyman Saget “could be painfully distracting — disruptive — because you’re here, let’s get this scene, let’s find out what works, what doesn’t,” as Saget played uptight but sensitive dad Danny Tanner on the show to Stamos’s rock ‘n’ roll cool Uncle Jesse. “He’s like [punching the air as if for each joke], ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’ I’d go, “Bob.’ He couldn’t stop it. I think, if I may say, that it could have been a detriment sometimes to him.”
Stamos said at Saget’s funeral, at which he eulogized him, that Saget’s first wife, Sherri Kramer, told him: “‘He loved you so much. He loved you so much. But in the beginning, he hated you.’ What? ‘He would come home and he was so jealous of you. He would just complain about you so much.'” Stamos also shared that his junior high school drama teacher emailed him with condolences — and recalled Stamos telling him, back in the day, how much Saget pushed his buttons.
The hit show ran until 1995 and the men eventually found their footing working together. “I think we met in the middle,” Stamos said. “But we both went in kicking and screaming, not wanting to bend what we do.”
Their real, deep friendship and brotherhood began after Full House ended — when Stamos’s dad died in 2011.
“I looked at this video of us of the last episode of Full House, the final bows,” Stamos said. “We all gathered around, and Bob eventually walked over and he hugged me, kissed me. But I don’t know how close I was to him at the end there. I didn’t think I needed a Bob in my life. I had my parents. I had my faith. I had whatever.”
He continued, “But then my dad dies, and this guy steps up like nobody in my life because everybody else was busted up. My sisters, my mom. But Bob wasn’t, and he just stepped in and took care of me, even to the point of ‘Can I host your dad’s funeral?’ Two hours of dirty jokes that I think my dad would’ve liked. But he gave people what they needed at that moment. Everybody needed a laugh, and he did it.”
He said that “cemented our friendship” and it only “got closer and closer from there.” Stamos said they “were there through all the most important moments” and “as close as anyone could be. But everybody said that about him … Next to my mom, he was my biggest cheerleader, my biggest fan. He would brag about me to people.”
Stamos said he was Saget’s “Cyrano through a lot of stuff.” He talked about being there through Saget’s divorce and getting back in the dating game. He recalled Saget “practically living on my couch” after a breakup, saying they were “like a married couple.”
Stamos called Saget “the most egotistical humble guy on the planet” and the “most insecure person I’ve met in my life,” noting he got him to start going to therapy.
“My job for many, many years was to help him to understand how good he was and how smart he was, how funny he was and how much people loved him. I guarantee you he went into that grave not knowing the love that this world has for him, and that saddens me so much because he wanted that so bad. He craved being accepted and loved and appreciated, and people knowing how damn good he was. And they did know it, but they didn’t get it to him in time.”
Saget got remarried to Kelly Rizzo in 2015 — and they were close couple friends with Stamos and his wife, Caitlin McHugh. Stamos spoke about the last time they were together and how uncharacteristically calm Saget was.
“Bob was always worried about everyone else, but he talked about death a lot. His wife, Kelly Rizzo, said she had a premonition. I didn’t see it,” Stamos said. “The last time we were all together, we went on a double date to Nobu, maybe a month before he passed away. He didn’t look like a guy who was going to die, but he was very calm, which was odd for Bob. He was at peace somehow. And he listened and he was thoughtful and didn’t interrupt; he cared about what we were saying.”
He ended by saying, “I hate to say it, but it was the Bob that I always wanted to see. And it was the last time I saw him.”
Saget was found dead Jan. 9 in his hotel room in Orlando, Fla. He had been on the road doing his comedy tour — and felt great about his performance at his final show the night before. Rizzo has said that he called and texted her after the show in seemed fine. Saget was supposed to fly home, but died in his sleep.
