A lifelong bond. Bob Saget and John Stamos weren’t just family on Full House — they considered each other brothers off screen too.
Saget, who died suddenly on January 9, 2022, at the age of 65, remained close with Stamos long after the show ended in 1995. Although the pair played brothers-in-law Danny Tanner and Jesse Katsopolis, respectively, on the beloved sitcom, they always viewed each other as family.
In October 2009, Saget reflected on just how rare it is to stay so close to one another after filming wrapped. “When you get to work with someone, when that work ends, whatever it may be, you don’t often see them as much,” he said, while honoring Stamos as the latter received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “John has truly become my family. His family is my family … our work family meant a great deal to us.”
Through the years, the pair supported each other through their ups and downs, both professionally and personally. After he attended Saget’s November 2018 wedding to Kelly Rizzo, Stamos reflected on their decades-long friendship. “Sometimes in life, the least likely person that you’d think would turn out to be your lifelong friend, someone who is there for you through the ups and downs and sideways’s – a brother and a confidant,” the You alum wrote on Instagram. “Someone to laugh with and cry with, but mostly laugh with, – well Bob turned out to be all that and more.”
Saget and Stamos, along with much of the original Full House cast, brought their familial bond back to the small screen in 2019 for the Netflix revival, Fuller House. The revival ended in 2020 after five seasons, but the How I Met Your Mother alum was confident that he would remain tight with his costars for years to come. “We’ve stayed friends all these years. It’s not just a press thing that we say,” Saget told Us Weekly in December 2019. He added that he “was more emotional about seeing [the cast] and being with them” than he was when saying goodbye to Danny Tanner.
In his tribute to Saget during his show in January 2022, Jimmy Kimmel even touched on the pair’s friendship, describing them as “beyond friends.” The late-night host added, “They were brothers. They are brothers.” Stamos shared a clip of the segment on Twitter, noting that “Bob would have loved this.”
Keep scrolling to relive Saget and Stamos’ brotherhood through the years:
