Candace Cameron Bure has opened up about how she felt while filming the Full House episode centered around her character D.J. Tanner’s weight insecurities
During her appearance on Boy Meets World rewatch podcast Pod Meets World, Bure detailed how strange it felt to grow up on a sitcom, with viewers fixated on your appearance. She admitted that it was toughest at 15 and 16 years old.
“I was always the chubby-cheeked girl and a lot of people loved that I was,” she said. “And I can look back and go like, I was just a normal, average girl. And yet you meet people and they’re like, ‘You’re so much thinner in person.’” This made the Full House alum question whether this was “all people see.”
“Of course, as a teenager, you feel that insecurity whether you’re on television or not,” she pointed out. “It gets magnified when you are, so those ages were a little bit more awkward for me.” Bure then shared that she always thinks about going back in time and hugging her teenage self and tell her, “Don’t listen to anyone.”
When asked by host Danielle Fishel if Bure ever had an episode of Full House written about her weight like Fishel did on Boy Meets World, Bure recalled the season four episode, “Shape Up,” where D.J. didn’t want to put a bathing suit on for a pool party, so she went on a crash diet for a week to lose weight. D.J. then passed out at the gym because she wasn’t eating.
Bure explained to Fishel that the producers consulted with her and her parents about the episode to make sure she would feel comfortable with it. “I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ But when you’re in it and doing it, it feels a little awkward,” Bure explained. The actress also recalled that she lost 20 pounds between that season and the next. The producers “thought it was so great” and they decided to include a scene in the opening credits in which she’s on an exercise bike, “just to promote that.”
Fishel then detailed her own experience with Boy Meets World addressing her weight gain in an episode. She shared that, unlike Bure’s situation, the producers didn’t check in to see if she was fine with this storyline. “When they called me into the office to tell me they were going to [add this storyline], it wasn’t really like they asked,” said Fishel. She noted that it wasn’t as if her body had changed drastically. “I had been aware that I had gained weight but I was still a size four.” The episode, “She’s Having My Baby Back Ribs,” also commented on her former co-star and Pod Meets World co-host Will Friedle’s weight gain.
“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, these people think I’ve gained enough weight [that they] have to write an entire episode about my weight gain,” Fishel recalled thinking at the time. “Then right now I have to say I’m fine with it because they didn’t even present to me another alternative. And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to do that.’”
