Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Have Been Excused From Joining the Cast of Fuller House After Successfully Ignoring “Three Years of Invitations”
It’s been 30 years since Full House premiered and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen made their debut as the adorable toddler Michelle Tanner, a role they were both cast for at the whopping age of six months old and which they played until the show was cancelled in 1995.
And while it’s been just three years, it’s also felt like three decades to the rest of the show’s former cast and crew since the Olsens, now 31, have spurned them in joining the show’s reboot, Fuller House, a spin-off series that premiered on Netflix in 2016 with a significant portion of the original cast—except of course the Olsens, who’ve apparently been ignoring invites to once again team up with their former coworkers since 2014.
“Personally, I’ve given up asking them,” the show’s creator, Jeff Franklin, told TVLine just in time for the first half of its third season to drop on Friday. “The door is open, but I’m not going to be calling them anymore to invite them. They just don’t seem interested in coming. It’s been three years of invitations, so they know the door is open. It’s up to them to decide if they want to come play or not.”
33 Years of Coordination Starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in West Hollywood, California, September 1994. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in New York, New York, January 1993. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in West Hollywood, California, July 2001. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Los Angeles, California, March 2002. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the premiere of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle in Hollywood, California, June 2003. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in Los Angeles, California, May 2004. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the 12th annual amfAR Gala in Cannes, France, May 2005. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Awards in New York, New York, November 2006. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen front-row at Jenni Kayne during New York Fashion Week Fall 2007. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the CFDA Fashion Awards in New York, New York, June 2007. Photo by Getty Images. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, both in Diane Von Furstenberg, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala for “Superheros: Fashion and Fantasy” in New York, New York, May 2008. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate, in Lanvin, and Ashley Olsen, in Christian Lacroix, at the Elle Style Awards in London, England, February 2010. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the Metropolitan Opera premiere in New York, New York, March 2011. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala for “Charles James: Beyond Fashion” in New York, New York, May 2014. Photo by Getty Images. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in The Row at the “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology” Costume Institute Exhibition Gala in New York, New York, May 2016. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen with Elizabeth Olsen, all in The Row, at the CFDA Fashion Awards in New York, New York, June 2016. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen arrive at “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between” Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum on May 1, 2017 in New York City. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate Olsen attend the Studio in a School 40th Anniversary Gala at Seagram Building Plaza on May 3, 2017 in New York City. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen attend the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 7, 2018 in New York City. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Ashley Olsen and Mary-Kate attend WSJ Magazine 2018 Innovator Awards Sponsored By Harry Winston, FlexJet & Barneys New York at MOMA on November 7, 2018 in New York City. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen attend The 2019 Met Gala Celebrating Camp: Notes on Fashion at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 06, 2019 in New York City. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Maybe the pair resents that they were put to work at just six months of age, or, more likely, they’re just simply too busy these days; they do, after all, have a collection of bed-themed fragrances to concoct, paparazzi to hide from, and art shows to star in. And, of course, they also have their day jobs as designers of not only The Row, one of the hottest tickets at New York Fashion Week—last year, even the twins themselves couldn’t get a seat at one of their shows and ended up sitting on the floor—but also Elizabeth & James, a womenswear label with a bit more affordable options than the former’s offerings like $1,000 tanktops.
John Stamos, who produces and stars in Fuller House, however, has not been so understanding about the twins’s now jam-packed schedules, and has doggedly making his case for the Olsens’s return for the last three years. (Even though he actually temporarily got them fired from Full House in 1987 when they cried too much for his liking on set.) While originally tweeting that he called “bulls—” on Mary-Kate’s telling WWD that “just found out” about the spin-off a few days after Stamos made it public, even though she’d recently run into another of the show’s stars, Bob Saget, he made it clear they’d made up by tweeting a couple of days later that he’d had a “sweet talk with M.K.” and using the hashtag “family.”
Once it really became clear the twins wouldn’t be getting involved, Stamos tweeted that he was “heartbroken” but “under[stood] they’re in a different place”—not that he and the crew had given up. As a temporary solution, Michelle’s absence on Fuller House was explained by the fact that the character, coincidentally, was running a fashion business in New York; meanwhile, off-screen, Stamos decided to make his appeal to a different Olsen, especially since, as he pointed out in another interview, “we only need one!”
“I was going to see Ashley last night and beg her to be on the show,” Stamos said in yet another interview when Fuller House was coming up on its second season. “I have a good feeling about it.” (So much so that he and the crew felt free to mock the prices of Elizabeth & James and name-check Mary-Kate and Ashley themselves.)
Evidently, that didn’t work either, though even after a weekend that saw the premiere of an Olsen-less season three and Franklin’s resigned remarks, Stamos still doesn’t seem ready to let go of the past. On Monday, he once again took to social media to express his feelings, this time on Instagram. His caption may have asked his followers about their thoughts on season three, but his post was of a 1989 video of Mary-Kate and Ashley, who stare at the camera to cutely say his name—and stick their tongue out at him.
Related: Elizabeth Olsen Explains Why Sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Don’t Indulge the Media With Interviews
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