Jodie Sweetin Breaks Down Her ‘Epic’ Full House Car Crash Stunt in Season 5: ‘It Was a Big One’

Jodie Sweetin is sharing all the behind-the-scenes details of possibly the most “legendary” moment in Full House history: the time her 8-year-old character crashed a car into the Tanner family’s kitchen.

On the most recent episode of their rewatch podcast How Rude, Tanneritos!, Sweetin and co-host Andrea Barber recapped the 1990 episode, “Honey, I Broke the House,” which Sweetin described as “epic.”

“And I don’t say that because it’s about Steph,” she added. “This is what I hear most often as people’s favorite episode.”

“This is a legendary episode,” Barber, 48, agreed. “Anyone who’s ever seen Full House will remember this episode even if you don’t remember the rest of the series.”

The season 5 episode initially finds Sweetin’s Stephanie pestering the rest of the Tanner clan, who are all uninterested in hearing about her day.

“You I know I will say [watching] this episode, I was like, ‘Wait. Did they actually think this — was this who I was?’ Like, the kid that wouldn’t shut up and they were like, ‘Let’s write an episode about it: she crashes into a car or crashes into a kitchen,’ ” Sweetin, 42, wondered.

Eventually, Dave Coulier’s Joey leaves Steph alone in the backyard with his recently purchased bright red 1963 AMC Rambler. While pretending to drive the car, Sweetin’s character manages to accidentally throw it into reverse, crashing it through the Tanner family’s kitchen wall.

“I remember that they had taken that set wall down and basically rebuilt it with balsa wood, which balsa wood is like a really light, easily breakable wood that they use a lot for stunts and things like that,” Sweetin recalled.

“They had a stunt driver, obviously. They did not let me back the car through the kitchen as a child,” she added. “They did one shot where it sort of rolled back, but that was it. And then, the person who is in the car is a stunt driver, a small person who could scoot down and kind of look like child size.”

Sweetin went on to describe the rigorous precautions taken on set when the scene was filmed, including only allowing necessary crew on the studio floor. “I don’t think anybody was allowed in the audience in case of, you know, a piece of something went flying,” she said.

She wasn’t sure, however, whether she remembered watching the crash from a distance or on a monitor. But, she said, “I definitely remember it happening because it’s loud to crash a car through a kitchen. You know, you’re rolling on set, so it’s like, ‘Okay, everybody quiet.’ You know, they ring the bell and everyone, everything is dead. It goes from dead silent to a car, you know, loudly crashing through a set and things going flying. And, yeah, it was, I mean, it was pretty intense to see.”

Sweetin explained that the show’s crew largely left the kitchen debris exactly as it was after filming the actual crash, but did clear a small pathway for her to climb into the car for subsequent shots. She even noted that if you look closely, you can see that the door she climbed in is still open in the episode.

“It was also really, it was fun to watch,” she said. “We didn’t really do a ton of that kind of stuff on Full House, and so that was a big one, and it was a big one for me to be a part of.”

The episode is so memorable, in fact, that Netflix’s reboot Fuller House recreated the scene in its final season.

“I didn’t do my neck any favors on that one,” Sweetin said of the Fuller House scene, which came in the show’s final Thanksgiving episode. “The next morning, I wake up and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. I have whiplash.’ “