John Stamos has spoken out about the backlash he received for wearing a bald cap to cheer up his longtime friend and Full House co-star Dave Coulier, who is battling stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In a candid conversation with TMZ on November 21, Stamos reflected on the heartfelt gesture and the challenges he faced during the visit.
“I flew across the country to be with my brother, right?” Stamos said, explaining his desire to support Coulier during a difficult time. The trip was made even more emotional for Stamos when he received devastating news mid-flight: his lifelong friend, Mike Owen, had passed away from a heart attack.
“My best friend, since I was 11 years old, died of a heart attack,” Stamos revealed. Despite his grief, he remained focused on uplifting Coulier. “I’m not gonna show that to Dave. I mean, I told him, but I said that’s done and cried privately.”
To lighten the mood, Stamos arrived wearing a bald cap as a playful nod to Coulier, who recently shaved his head due to his cancer treatment. “He wanted me to come to shave his head. I knew before, so I brought the bald cap from the studio,” Stamos explained. “We laughed so freaking hard.”
However, Stamos was surprised to face criticism online for the gesture. “I don’t look at stuff [online]. I swear most of the time I don’t, but this one really hurt me mainly because I didn’t understand it,” he said. “But the point is that I’m embarrassed for people that they waste time on this when all I was doing was cheering up a friend, and I’m sorry—I started to say ‘I’m sorry,’ I’m not sorry.”
Stamos described the visit as deeply meaningful. “He cried, we laughed, we watched old movies, and we told stories. I brought videos. It just was a beautiful thing,” he shared, noting with a laugh that they didn’t watch Full House.
Coulier also addressed the criticism, defending their shared humor in the face of adversity. “I’m a comedian and humor is what drives me. John knows how to cheer me up, and I laughed out loud when he arrived wearing a bald cap,” Coulier wrote in a November 19 Instagram post. Despite the backlash, Stamos’s tribute stands as a testament to their enduring friendship and the power of humor in tough times.