Jodie Sweetin Revisits Anti-Bullying “Full House ”Episode: 'I'm So Proud to Be Steph'

“Hopefully, a generation of young people watched that and maybe learned something,” Sweetin said on her 'How Rude, Tanneritos!' podcast

Full House’s Stephanie Tanner was a champion of the underdog.

On a recent episode of their re-watch podcast How Rude, Tanneritos!, hosts Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber revisited an episode from the hit sitcom’s third season that had them both cheering Sweetin’s character and experiencing all the feels.

The 1989 episode wasn’t exactly your standard “very special episode,” but its anti-bullying message certainly made it special for Sweetin. “Nerd for a Day” found her character getting into trouble at school for teasing a classmate, Walter “Duckface” Berman (played by a young Whit Hertford), along with the rest of her peers.

“This feels a little out of character for Steph,” Barber, 48, noted, adding later that the middle Tanner sibling was usually “the most grown-up one in the entire Full House.”

“It’s a very kid thing to do,” Sweetin, 42, said of Stephanie’s bowing to peer pressure and ganging up on a less popular kid, “which was why this was such a great episode.”

As Sweetin and Barber noted in their recap, after learning about Stephanie’s behavior, Uncle Jesse (John Stamos) forces her to apologize to Hertford’s character, leading “Duckface” to mistakenly believe she is his “secret girlfriend.”

“Watching it as an adult,” Sweetin said, “my heart is breaking for Walter.”

Related: Full House's Jodie Sweetin Remembers Filming the Iconic Hawaii Episode — and Everything That Went Wrong

When Stephanie complains to Jesse that doing the right thing has resulted in the uncomfortable mix-up with Walter, Stamos’s character tells her that “just because you do the right thing doesn't mean your life is gonna be perfect. You do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.”

“Bingo,” Barber commented. “That is some sage advice.”

Later in the Full House episode, when other kids get wind that Steph is hanging out with Walter and begin teasing both of them, Sweetin’s character finally sticks up for him, telling her classmates that while Walter isn’t her boyfriend, he is her friend.

“Boy, did I cheer!” Barber said of the moment.

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“I watched this episode, and I was like, I'm so proud to be Steph. Like, I'm so proud of her,” Sweetin said, adding that she and her character were always “kindred spirits.”

Watching the episode, Sweetin reflected, “made me really proud that we did such a great episode about being kind to others who are a little bit different, and that Steph was the one who was, like, not gonna put up with it.”

“I'm really proud that that was who I got to be as the character and that she got to teach that lesson,” she continued.

Related: Andrea Barber Remembers Feeling 'Mortified' Having to Stuff Her Bra on Full House: 'Didn’t Love It'

“That was the magic of Full House,” Barber agreed. “It was these important messages told through people who had this genuine connection.”

“I'm very proud of this episode,” Sweetin added. “Steph is a badass. I love that she is who she is, and she'll fight for people. That was admirable and I'm just so glad that, you know, hopefully, a generation of young people watched that and maybe learned something.”

Hertford, who went on to appear in several Full House episodes and also had small roles as a child actor in Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Jurassic Park and The Addams Family, joined Sweetin and Barber for a two-part interview posted late last week. The 45-year-old, who now works primarily as a writer and theater director in the U.K., took a light approach to his bullied character.

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“Why are his lips stuck in that position?” Barber asked of the facial expression that earned the character his “Duckface” nickname. “I wanna know that!”

“My, like, classical training later in life, I would have asked all of these questions,” Hertford joked, “but at 10, I was just sort of like, ‘I'm on TV!’ ”

While “Duckface” didn’t return for Fuller House — Hertford said that was likely because he was in London around the time when Netflix’s reboot was filming in 2016 — Sweetin had her own theory about where the character might have ended up as an adult.

“I think what happened is that Duckface, much like Steph, they both traveled the world and became DJs,” she said. “And they sort of operated in the same circles like in Ibiza and all these places, you know, where they were, like, in their little party life or whatever … But now they're both back in San Francisco, and I think that's where we see things take off.”

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