The stand-up comedian and actor opens up about where Uncle Joey would be today, the tragic fate of Mr. Woodchuck, and the Alanis rumors.
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Dave Coulier is best known for his portrayal as the lovable Uncle Joey on the quintessential TGIF sitcom, Full House, which ran from 1987 to 1995. Now 54 years old, the actor who started his career as stand-up comedian and voice-over artist spoke with BuzzFeed ahead of his appearance on Oprah: Where Are They Now? about his memories making the iconic show, what happened to Mr. Woodchuck, and those Alanis Morissette rumors.
BuzzFeed: So you're back to doing stand-up. Why did you decide to go into doing the whole clean comedy thing?
Dave Coulier: Well, it wasn't really a route that I chose; it was a route that was kinda chosen for me. Because, back in the day, The Tonight Show was the only showcase, nationally, for comedians on television and if you wanted to get on The Tonight Show, you had to work clean; you had to be able to perform in front of a national audience on network television. So I just didn't want to veer away from that. I didn't want to edit myself. I wanted jokes to ring true for that national audience.
Jay Leno said something to me early on in my career, when I was only 19 years old on stage at The Comedy Store in Hollywood on Sunset Blvd, and he came up to me after the show one night and said [imitating Leno's voice], "Hey Coulier, I saw your set. That's really good clean stuff. You know, if you work clean, you'll work everywhere." And it was the smartest thing another comedian ever said to me. I thought about it afterwards and thought, What does that mean? Oh, what it means is, I'll never have to edit myself. I'll be able to play corporate dates, colleges, television, and never have to edit a joke. And it's not like I am reinventing the wheel. We've been seeing clean comedy sets on Letterman and The Tonight Show for decades. But, if you look at the top-touring comedians right now, Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan, completely clean. I think I'm just a little more vocal about it.
Everyone knows you as Joey from Full House, but many people from the same generation might be surprised to know you did lots of voice acting in cartoons throughout the '80s, like Muppet Babies and Ghostbusters. How did you fall into that?
DC: I had always done voices as a kid. I was always a jock growing up, played a lot of hockey in Detroit. I was always the funny guy in the locker room and when you got 20 guys sitting around, you have a captive audience. So I would just do impressions of teammates, or coaches, or guys that we knew and that's kinda how I started – then people started telling me, "You know you're pretty good at that." And, so I guess, enough people told me to the point where I started to believe it myself and I guess it turned into a career, didn't it?
As a kid, it started with Bullwinkle and Popeye, 'cause I loved watching those shows. So I would just mimic cartoons that I really loved and other people would respond to that. It was fun. And when I moved to L.A., when I was 20 years old, I put an audition tape together and I sent it to Hanna-Barbera on a Friday, and on Monday, they called and said, "Listen, we love your voice, Dave. Can you come in and work on Scooby-Doo?" and I said, "Absolutely!" And that was my first voice-over job working for Scooby-Doo, believe it or not.
Coulier as stand-up comedian Joey Gladstone on Full House.
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How did you land the part on Full House?
DC: I went on a cattle-call audition — they were auditioning every comedian from New York and Los Angeles. And it actually turned out, to be honest with you, to be one of the easiest jobs I ever auditioned for.
I went in and auditioned for the role of Joey, which the character hadn't been named Joey Gladstone at that time. I can't even remember what the character's name was that I was auditioning for. But I read the part and I said, Ah, that was great.
Then I was walking out and Tom Miller, one of the Full House executive producers, said, "Can you read for the role of the father as well?" and the light bulb that went off in my head was, "Well, I didn't get this part." So I came back in five minutes later and read for the role of the father. As I was leaving Bob Boyett, who was one of our Full House executive producers — and who, years before I had pitched a pilot I had written to — said, "If you don't get this role then maybe we can talk about that show that you pitched me all those years ago." And I said, "You remember that?" to which he responded, "Heck yeah, I remember that. That was a great idea! You have no idea how close [I was] to putting something together with that script."
So I went home and there was a message – back when we had answering machines – and it was from my manager Brad Grey, who is now the head of Paramount Studios, but was my manager then. He said, "Dave, you've got this Full House pilot." And I just thought, Wow, that was so easy. I was only in there like 10 minutes. No callbacks. Nothing. That's it.
And that's how it happened.
Full House seemed to work in a lot of your voice-over talents, and it became iconic for your character. Was that something that you worked with the show's writers on or were they ad-libs?
DC: They did and you're absolutely right on track there. I did work with them and they actually came to watch me perform in nightclubs a couple of times and they got a lot of ideas from watching me work live, as to what they could incorporate in the show. So they were very, very generous with me.
Sometimes – it didn't happen until Season 3 – in the script, they would let me improv. And in the script it would just say: Dave will come up with something funny here.
One of the most enduring things about your Joey is his trademark phrase "Cut. It. Out." Did you come up with that?
DC: (Laughs.) I stole that from a good friend of mine named Mark Cendrowski, who now directs The Big Bang Theory. We've been friends since we were 8 years old and we used to shoot little 8mm film comedies with a camera his dad had given us.
But Mark and I, we were a comedy duo for a couple of minutes and he would do this Mark Suave character and he would always do this: He would look at a lady in the front row and go, "You're in love with me, now cut. it. out." And so I told him, "I'm going to steal that. I'm going to use that someday." And he said, "Ah, you can't steal that." So I starred on a show on Nickelodeon called Out of Control and it became my hook on the show. And when Full House started, I just brought it over and it stuck.
To this day Mark is like, "You owe me money for that."
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