‘Fuller House’ Michelle Tanner Debacle: Was Elizabeth Olsen Approached To Fill In For Her Famous Sisters?

When Fuller House was announced there was a series of questions that fans were wondering. As different original cast members signed on to the Netflix spin-off series, most of those questions shifted to the character of Michelle Tanner. How were producers going to pull off showing Michelle Tanner?

Even before the Olsen twins turned down the offer to reprise the role, it was known that the famous twins had moved on from acting and were busy running their own fashion empire in New York.

Seeing as Fuller House was going to film in L.A. and that the two departed that industry, the writing seemed to be on the wall. Even though John Stamos, who’s returning as Uncle Jesse, and an acting producer, was the only cast member that seemed hopeful that Michelle Tanner would be included in some way.

John Stamos Throws a Little Shade at the Olsen Twins for Not Reprising Their Role as Michelle Tanner in Fuller House pic.twitter.com/1o8cQVMEUk

— UPG (@upg_net) January 5, 2016

We know now that the producers of the show have decided to just mention Michelle Tanner, since she doesn’t have anyone to fill her shoes. That said, from Stamos’ words, it seems like they tried really hard to bring the youngest Tanner sister to life. According to John Stamos, at one point, producers asked the youngest Olsen sister, actress Elizabeth Olsen, to take on the role that her older sisters are still famous for.

Elizabeth Olsen was approached to play Michelle Tanner on “Fuller House” https://t.co/e78VOO2pYa pic.twitter.com/cjHOXMcXOQ

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) January 5, 2016

Stamos told Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM talk show that they did try to approach Elizabeth Olsen, even if it was a long shot from the beginning. “We actually went to—I don’t think this has been talked about… I didn’t do it, I think Jeff Franklin did—I said, ‘Call the sister [Elizabeth Olsen]. Ask her’ … We talked to her agent and her agent was like, ‘Come on she’s not going to do that,’ but we did call her agent.”

Cohen replied, “That would’ve been kind of genius … I mean take kinda out of that sentence.”

It might be a genius idea, and some fans seemed to champion this idea from the beginning, but it’s not a huge surprise to learn that this offer didn’t even get directly to Elizabeth Olsen before her agent nixed it entirely. Very early on in her career, the youngest Olsen sister designed her career to be radically different from her famous sisters. Although she never put her sisters down, Elizabeth was known out the gate for her intense work as an indie actress, and quickly became a promising young talent that was at the top of casting director’s lists.

To put it simply, even though Netflix is an exciting new platform for great television, Olsen’s more likely to take something that’s more in line with a gutsy role on House of Cards than a campy spin-off show like Fuller House. If she took on the role, it would be casting her an extremely large shadow of her older sisters, and it seems like she’s done everything to make sure the industry doesn’t put her in that place, so to take Fuller House, in many ways, would be to slide backwards during a time where the sky is the limit for Elizabeth.

As the Inquisitr reported, Fuller House producers plan on mentioning Michelle Tanner. Instead of living on her own in San Francisco, it’s said that Michelle Tanner, like the real life actresses that portrayed her, went off to New York to build her own fashion empire. Not the biggest stretch in television history, but we’ll buy it. It’s said that in one episode different characters spend their time making prank calls to Michelle Tanner, saying her famous catch phrase, “You got it, dude!”

[Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images]