The Dangerous Full House Scene Star John Stamos Was Absolutely Terrified To Shoot

One of the oldest pieces of advice in filmmaking is to never work with children or animals, but for actor John Stamos, that wasn't really an option. In his long-running role as Uncle Jesse on the ABC family comedy "Full House," Stamos worked with a whole crew of child actors, and on one particularly memorable episode, he co-starred with a chimpanzee named Ginger. Uncle Jesse is supposed to be the epitome of cool, but Stamos apparently had to work to keep his cool around Ginger because he was terrified of her. 

On an episode of the rewatch podcast "How Rude, Tanneritos!," former "Full House" stars Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber revisited the episode "Too Much Monkey Business" and recalled Stamos being rather afraid of working with the ape. (And for good reason — chimps can be extremely dangerous and unpredictable!) While things thankfully didn't go horribly awry like the nightmarish "Gordy's Home" scene in "Nope" and Stamos made it out relatively unscathed, he also did have to cooperate with a lot of monkey business and still try to make America laugh. 

On the podcast Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber, who played middle child Stephanie Tanner and her neighbor and nemesis Kimmy Gibbler respectively, remembered John Stamos being incredibly nervous around their chimpanzee co-star. Sweetin noted that the animal's handlers were pretty no-nonsense, explaining that "if you have to interact with it, it has to get to know you a little bit. But don't look it in the eye, don't smile at it." That was kind of a challenge for Stamos, because in the episode Ginger is supposed to have a crush on Uncle Jesse. That means she climbs all over him in one scene, and later climbs into bed beside him and begins spanking him from behind, while Jesse believes that she's actually his wife Becky (played by Lori Loughlin, who's standing across the room laughing the whole time). 

Here's the thing: while the scenes are pretty cute and Stamos is clearly cracking up while being spanked by a monkey, it's hard not to blame him for being afraid of Ginger. Chimpanzees can cause serious damage to humans, including ripping off faces and amputating limbs (seriously, the faceless victim in "Nope" is based on a 2009 case of a real chimpanzee attack), so Stamos's fear was more than warranted. In the end everything worked out, but it's probably a good thing that Hollywood is using animal actors less and less. Is the man-in-a-monkey-suit in the 2026 killer chimp movie "Primate" a little silly? Yeah, but I'll take it over someone worrying about getting their face ripped off any day of the week, and I bet Uncle Jesse (and John Stamos) would probably feel the same.