The cast may look nothing like the original stars, but viewers of The Unauthorized Full House Story on Saturday, Aug. 22 can take comfort in the fact that the rest of the movie will be more realistic — well, kind of. With the Lifetime film having "unauthorized" right there in the title, fans of the original Full House may be wondering how accurate The Unauthorized Full House Story is. The shenanigans of the Tanner household are sacred ground for people who grew up watching the series, so it makes sense that fans would to see it stay as clean as Danny Tanner's tabletop.
While last year's The Unauthorized Saved By the Bell Story had a controversial source, with the movie being loosely inspired by cast member Dustin Diamond's book Behind the Bell , The Unauthorized Full House Story doesn't have the same contentious origin. But even without a Dustin Diamond, the cast of Full House was still interesting enough to warrant a Full House Story. And though I'm slightly skeptical that these stories won't be over-dramatized (but, hey wasn't everything overdramatic on Full House?), the writer of The Unauthorized Full House Story, Ron McGee, told USA Today that these Unauthorized films do need legitimate sources. The newspaper used Bob Saget's own memoir as an example of a source used for some of the more scandalous scenes featuring the actor and John Stamos. "From a legal standpoint, you need sources on everything," McGee said. "Literally every scene of the script, there's an article to point to, because that all has to be vetted by the legal team."
Screenwriter McGee even told The New York Times , "there were times when I would try to lean toward the drama, and Lifetime execs were like: 'Can we really validate that? Are we sure that’s true, or is that just a rumor someone was airing?'" And though I'd love to see the version where McGee really went for the drama (he also wrote Unauthorized Saved By the Bell), it's actually better that The Unauthorized Full House Story will portray true — if sensationalized — stories.
So the screenwriter of The Unauthorized Full House Story says all of the moments in the film are accurate, but what about the cast? One of the stories from The Unauthorized Full House Story has already been confirmed to be true by one of the original stars of Full House. Uncle Jesse himself, John Stamos, said that a scene in the Lifetime movie with him asking for the Olsen twins to be replaced really did happen. During a panel at the Television Critics Association where he discussed his new show Grandfathered, the real-life Stamos confirmed that he wasn't sold on the Olsens when they first were hired. TVLine reported that Stamos said, "The Olsen twins cried a lot. It was very difficult to get the shot. So [that scene] is actually 100 percent accurate."
Although I'm still lamenting over the fact that the stars of The Unauthorized Full House Story look nothing like the fresh-faced TV family of my childhood, I am pleased that the content of The Unauthorized Full House Story will all be based on actual stories from on and off the set. But whether I am emotionally prepared to see Danny Tanner do Whip-Its while on the Full House set is a whole other story. Oh hell, I'll still be there to watch it.
Images: Sergei Bachlakov/Lifetime; Giphy (3)
