Courtesy NetflixThere’s been a lot of talk about the fact that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen won’t be back for Fuller House, the Full House reboot hitting Netflix next month. But now, executive producer Bob Boyett tells People magazine exactly why the two stars — who once played Michelle Tanner — won’t be featured.
“Ashley said, ‘I have not been in front of a camera since I was 17 and I don’t feel comfortable acting,'” Boyett tells the magazine. “Mary-Kate said, ‘It would have to be me because Ash doesn’t want to do it. But the timing is so bad for us.'”
He added that the twins’ work on their fashion lines — The Row and Elizabeth and James — also conflicted with filming of the show. Their fashion careers have long overtaken any acting aspirations the two might have had going into adulthood, and co-star John Stamos says he understands.
“Lori [Loughlin] was talking to me about the twins and said, ‘They just won a CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America] award.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s like winning an Oscar.’ It was them and Tom Ford. I get where they’re at,” he explained.
Adding to the disconnect, says co-star Dave Coulier, is the fact that the Olsen twins, 29, were not even one year old when the show started filming back in the mid-1980s.
Coulier explains, “I think they have a different perspective. When we get together and we reminisce, they were babies [at the time]. So they don’t share those same memories.”
People reports that the show will explain Michelle’s absence by nodding to the twins’ real lives: it’ll be explained that she’s missing the family reunion in the first episode because she’s in New York running her fashion empire. Fuller House debuts February 26.
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