Being charming fits Stamos fine
LOS ANGELES — In conversation, John Stamos comes across as entirely at ease in his handsome, age-defying skin.
Who wouldn’t be? But he admits that he longed to slip into something less comfortable on TV, a character distant from the good-natured charmers he’s known for. He thought he’d found it.
“I was auditioning for an Amazon pilot called ‘Cocked,’ as this drugged-out guy who inherits a gun company. It was very dark, and I just kept auditioning, and I really wanted it, and I didn’t get it,” he recalled.
His agent had a rebound suggestion. If his goal was to be on TV and entertain viewers, Stamos was advised to do what he does best.
He found the role and the vehicle in Fox’s new comedy “Grandfathered” (8 p.m. Tuesdays), cut with couture precision to fit him. Stamos plays a restaurateur and — kinda — content single guy who finds his self-absorbed life upended by the 20-something son he didn’t know he had. Oh, and there’s also a grandbaby.
Stamos, 52, has effectively played against type before, most notably in Broadway revivals “Cabaret” and Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man.” But he says he’s happily accepted his “Grandfathered” fate as swinging Jimmy Martino, grounded by his past.
“I’m satisfied with being a guy who’s likable and funny and self-deprecating,” Stamos said. “I don’t need to stretch so far, especially in television where you could play a character, hopefully, for years.”
And if the playboy-out-of-water evokes “Full House,” the 1980s-plus comedy in which he played a breezily irresponsible guy called on to help raise a family (and which is being revisited with a Netflix sequel), Stamos is unfazed.
“I’m not afraid to lean into what people want to see me do,” he said.
