‘Fuller House’ Star Andrea Barber Reflects on Saying Goodbye to Kimmy Gibbler… Again

Every journey comes to an end—even journeys that start and end in the same impossibly large San Francisco house. After a wildly successful five-season run, Netflix’s Fuller House is turning out the lights and locking the doors. The saga, which truly began almost 33 years ago with the debut of Full House on ABC, has accomplished a lot in its stretch on Netflix. There’s been a birth, multiple weddings, a trip to Japan, a velcro wall, a Trollercoaster, celebrity cameos galore, and just a ton of Emmy-nominated, possibly avant-garde hijinks. Will we get more? The show’s Netflix days are over, but you know what D.J. Fuller always says: the door’s always open.

But in the momentous event of the show’s Netflix finale and break from the airwaves for the foreseeable future, we have to celebrate what the show accomplished. What better way to do that than by talking to the heart of the Fuller/Tanner/Gibbler bunch: Andrea Barber, the actor who’s made Kimmy Gibbler one of the all-time iconic sitcom weirdos. Initially a recurring character in the first few seasons of Full House, the show eventually recognized Kimmy as a standout guaranteed laugh-getter and promoted her to full-time status. For Fuller House, Barber–who essentially left acting behind after Full House abruptly wrapped in 1995—became an integral part of the new series. She was a third of the lead She Wolf Pack, alongside her longtime friends Candace Cameron Bure and Jodie Sweetin. And truthfully, you can possibly credit Fuller House’s delightfully off-balance foundation on Gibbler’s irreplaceable involvement. Like Kimmy, Fuller House was wackier, totally unpredictable, and even more sincere than it’s predecessor. Such is the Gibbler magic.

Decider got the chance to chat with Andrea Barber about what it was like to get back into the Gibbler groove five years ago, what it was like to say goodbye to her TV family, and all of the crazy stunts that went down in-between.

Decider: What a ride Fuller House has been! Four years, five seasons—did you see this coming when you said yes to this role again?

Andrea Barber: Oh, five years ago, yeah. I was ready. Thirty years ago, no. I had no idea, I thought this would be a one-time gig. I didn’t know Kimmy Gibbler would become a thing, and Full House would become a cult hit. Nobody predicted that. But five years ago, yeah. We were ready. We were pumped. We knew our fanbase was so loyal. They’re such die-hards, we knew that they would come along for this ride with us. We had some trouble convincing the executives that this would be a success. But fortunately, Netflix listened and were like, “Hey! We think we got a home run on our hands here.” And so yeah, it’s been magic. It’s just been magic for five years. It’s been everything I’ve hoped and dreamed for.

Was there any hesitation about coming back? You took 20 years off from acting and then made your comeback on Netflix!

[Laughs] No! There was no hesitation. There probably should have been, because you’re right. I stopped acting at 18. I never planned to go back to acting. My heart wasn’t in it, and I had other interests I wanted to pursue. I never thought that I’d be back in it. But then when [Full House creator] Jeff Franklin was like, “Hey, I got this idea for this spin-off. Do you want to come do this?’ And I was like, “Heck yeah!’ That’s because of my love for the character and my love for the people. I couldn’t wait to do this again with Candace [Cameron Bure] and Jodie [Sweetin] and the rest of the cast. It was magic 30 years ago, and I knew we could capture that magic all over again. So that’s why I didn’t hesitate, because I figured it would be a great experience. And it was.

Yeah, when you phrase it that way about coming back—my 20 year break and on such a big platform like Netflix—I probably should have been a little more nervous! But I was just excited, more than anything. I was ready to get back in it. And fortunately, it was like riding a bike, This character never really left my subconscious. I was able to bring her out of retirement pretty easily. I was lucky in that regard. But that’s what happens when you play a character for 8 years, as a kid. It’s like learning a language. It just becomes a part of you, and then you’re fluent for the rest of your life. So I’m fluent in Kimmy Gibbler for the rest of my life now. [Laughs]

Fuller House kind of kicked off a trend of sitcom revivals, none of which have lasted as long as Fuller House. What made Fuller House work?

I think it’s because it’s a multigenerational show, so it’s something that parents can watch with their kids. And it’s always been like that, from the very beginning of the Full House days. It was always meant to be a family show, where you can sit down and the kids love the show and the parents aren’t bored. It’s great co-family viewing. Especially now in quarantine, this is great. This is what we need right now: it’s something we can watch with our kids and not be bored.

I think it stands the test of time because all of the kids that grew up with Full House are so thrilled. They’re invested in our characters and they want to introduce their kids to these characters that they grew up loving. So now their kids love our characters, and hey—you know, in 10 or 20 years, maybe those kids will have kids and teach those kids and grandchildren to love the show too. It’s feel-good TV, like sitting down with your favorite mac ‘n’ cheese dish. It feels good when you watch it and consume it.

I think one of the things that made Fuller House succeed is that the show quickly found its own voice. It was Fuller House Season 1 rather than Full House Season 9. It’s the same universe, the same characters and actors, but Fuller House is heightened, it’s sillier, it’s more meta. Was that the intention?

That was the goal from the very beginning. From Season 1, we wanted it to have its own audience. We were hoping, obviously, to carry the die-hard fans with us, but we wanted to be clear: “Hey. Even if you’ve never seen Full House before, Fuller House can stand on its own.” And I believe we accomplished that, because there are so many kids that watched Fuller House and loved Fuller House so much, and they’d never even seen the original show. So I think that speaks to the success of our writers and our executive producers and yeah, us as actors too. I’m glad you said that, because we were hoping that it would stand the test of time and be able to stand on its own. I’m happy it’s accomplished that.

Fuller House also let you take Kimmy Gibbler in a totally kooky direction with a lot more crazy, physical stunts. Do any of those stunts stand out as fun—or even a bit scary—to film?

[Laughs] It was mostly fun! Anything that was too scary, they got a stunt double to do it. The ones that stand out in my mind the most—one is the “Nutcrackers” episode where I dressed up as the rat.

It’s not even a stunt, it’s having to do all these crazy dance moves in a rat king costume. That was really out there. The writers kept saying, “More, more! Add more moves! Do Michael Jackson now! Now do the shopping cart move!” So we just kept adding, it kept getting bigger and bigger as the week went on. Finally, I was just like, “Man! Guys, I am not that in shape!” I needed a rest period after each take, because it was so much. But it was so much fun to do.

And the other one that I loved was, it was Season 3, when Kimmy has a Teppanyaki grill in the kitchen suddenly, and she’s doing all these Teppanyaki moves with knives. That was fun. Originally they had hired a hand double to come in and perform these moves, but none of the women they had hired could do these special Teppanyaki moves, because it’s primarily a male career in the culture.

So the men that they brought in to do the Teppanyaki moves—I have really tiny hands, and these men have ginormous hands. It wasn’t believable, even when they shaved the hair off of their hands and everything. It wasn’t believable. Jeff Franklin was going crazy, “This isn’t believable! We need to believe this! Kimmy’s hands, what are we going to do?” Finally I was like, “Just show me how to do it! I’ll do it. Just let me try it.” So these guys, these Teppanyaki guys, choreograph all these Teppanyaki moves and taught me how to do it in like an hour. I just kept practicing and practicing, and I came in early to keep practicing. I can’t actually cook, but for show, it was great, just to be able to flip some knives and chop some egg and rice. It was so much fun. Everyone was like, “How did you do that?” And I’m like, “I don’t know! It’s all for show. Like I said, don’t eat the food, because for sure you’ll get sick.”

Of course there are many moments in the final season that will resonate with fans, but there’s one in particular that stuck out to me. When Kimmy and Jimmy are roleplaying as their parents, they make the point that they always thought the Tanners were the weird ones—which is a sentiment that a lot of fans have shared. What was it like being able to play that moment?

I tell you what, man, that was just bizarre. Adam Hagenbuch, who plays Jimmy Gibbler, we kind of made that up at the table read. I asked him at the table read, “What are you going to do? Are you going to do an accent? What are these Gibbler parents like?” And they were written as, like, these adventurers. We were going to be dressed as safari people. I can only really do one accent, so I think they’ll just be faux-British. Adam put his own spin on it. We just had to go big. That’s something where you’ve got to go big or go home, so I just went for it. We went for it, and at one point, I was just like, “I look crazy.” I was doing a scene with myself at one point, where I was playing Mrs. Gibbler and Kimmy Gibbler, and doing the dialogue of both all at the same time. I just thought, “This is really crazy.” The writers and producers were like, “No, it works! It works! Just go for it.” I’m like, “Okay, I’m just going to trust you guys.”

And I love that line at the end of the scene, where Jimmy Gibbler goes, “No! You’re the weird ones! You’re writing songs called ‘Forever,’ and y’all live in the same house.” He has an epic line.

But it’s true! The Tanners are the weird ones, when you put it all in perspective like that. We got a car in the kitchen and Bollywood productions going on in the backyard. It’s so much fun. I love that it’s now a part of the canon of Fuller House. It was so fun.

And also, I love that episode because there’s a scene at the end between Kimmy and Joey where we talk about these missing relationships in our own biological families. That’s why we were drawn to the Tanner family all those years ago. It’s such a touching scene, and I loved that they finally addressed that. Why was Joey always around? Why was Kimmy always over at the Tanner house? And we finally find out: it’s that the Tanners were the missing family that Kimmy and Joey never had.

It’s so touching, and I think a lot of people can relate to that, too. Just finding family in friends, and not necessarily the people you’re blood related to. It’s very touching, and I love that scene between Dave Coulier and I so much.

It’s great that Fuller House got a season to properly plan a goodbye and to include moments like that one, because I understand that Full House ended rather abruptly.

Oh yeah, we didn’t know. There was a lot of back and forth. Are we getting canceled? Are we not? Is another network picking us up? Yeah, we didn’t really know until three weeks before the end of Season 8 that Full House was being canceled. So that’s why you get the Michelle falls off a horse and gets amnesia storyline, because there was no time to write to the finale. Usually, you want some sort of build-up to that. So I’m really grateful that we had a full season of notice, that the writers could actually write to a finale—and write an ending, even though it doesn’t end completely. I think the final episode leaves you with a sense of, okay, these characters will live on at least in our memories, if not in our TVs. It was nice to be able to build that crescendo and feel all of those emotions, both for the viewers and for the actors. We needed that too, just as much as the audience does. We needed to be able to say a proper goodbye this time—and boy, did we! We said goodbye in a big way. It was very, very emotional. There was a lot of crying that last day and the last two weeks, in particular.

I have to imagine that when we see y’all crying in the last episode, those tears have to be real.

Yeah, it’s true. That last scene, there’s very little acting. It’s all very real, real emotions, real tears. Candace has a great speech that she gives. She hadn’t really said it or memorized it, because she didn’t want to say goodbye. We heard her say the speech [during rehearsals], but she was kind of just marking it. She wasn’t really performing it all week, throughout rehearsal. So when we got to the final scene, on the final taping night, she just let it out. She let it out. That was it. It was basically one take. We did a second take, just for pick-ups and close-ups, but what you see is basically it. She went for it. We were just all destroyed in that moment. It was so emotional. It’s not just sad—it’s proud and happy and satisfied. It’s all of the emotions, all wrapped into one big, big cry-fest. That’s what you saw.

With Fuller House wrapped, what’s next for you? Candace and Jodie directed episodes of Fuller House—is that in the cards for you?

Yeah, well, no. I have no desire to direct. I’ll just put that out there! I did write an episode, though. I wrote Episode 13, called “College Tours,” where Kimmy and D.J. take Jackson and Ramona to D.J.’s alma mater. We crash a sorority party. I wrote that episode. I got to stretch my skills. That was my behind-the-scenes [role]. Jodie directed one, Candace directed several, but I’m like, “No, I want to write. That’s my skill set.” So that was awesome. That’s always on my mind, for the future. I want to stay in comedy, I feel like that’s my sweet spot. That’s what I love doing. I love making people laugh and I would love to stay working in television—if television can figure out how we can make more TV in a safe way. That’s my goal, is to do more sitcoms or more of anything, as long as it’s making people laugh. That’s my goal.

Stream Fuller House on Netflix