Will Friedle On The Heartbreaking Way The Olsen Twins’ “Handlers” Would Control Them As Toddlers
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As you probably know, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were just nine months old when they landed the role of Michelle Tanner in the ABC sitcom Full House back in 1987, with the twins sharing the role to comply with child labor laws that restricted the amount of time an infant could be on set.
As the years went on, Mary-Kate and Ashley became breakout stars, and throughout their childhood, they enjoyed staggering fame and success. Before their 18th birthday, the sisters starred in more than 20 movies and TV shows together, with Dualstar Entertainment Group being created in 1993 specifically to produce Mary-Kate and Ashley projects and products.
In adulthood, the twins gradually stepped away from acting before retiring from the industry entirely to focus on fashion and business. They were notably absent from the Full House sequel series, Fuller House, when it premiered in 2016, and did not make so much as a cameo throughout the show’s four-year run.
Earlier this year, the Olsen twins’ Full House co-stars Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber — who played Stephanie Tanner and Kimmy Gibbler on the show — opened up about the logistics of filming with twins during an episode of their How Rude, Tanneritos podcast.
Answering a fan question, Jodie admitted that “at the beginning,” Ashley was favored by directors as she was more amenable, adding: “Mary-Kate did not like being out on set, but Ashley was like: ‘Cool, whatevs.’ She was much more docile about it.”
Although they were infants at the time, Jodie said that this held up as the twins got older, too, saying: “That’s absolutely who they are. Ashley will be like: ‘Sure, whatevs.’ Mary Kate was like: ‘I don’t want to do this.'”
However, both stars recalled that each twin wanted to do the scenes where their character got to eat treats like candy and cookies, with Jodie explaining that directors “had to divide up the sweets eating scenes.” She shared: “Because that was the only thing that they were like: ‘This isn’t fair.’ They couldn’t have one twin eating more sweets than the other one, or the girls would riot.”
And former Boy Meets World star Will Friedle recalled his “weird” first-hand experience of working with Mary-Kate and Ashley when they were very young stars during a recent episode of his podcast, Pod Meets World.
For reference, Will and his co-hosts, Rider Strong and Danielle Fishel, all got their start as child stars and worked together on the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World in the ‘90s. Earlier this month, they reviewed a festive episode of Full House on their pod.
At the start of the episode, Danielle asked Will and Rider if they’d ever met the Olsen twins, and Will said that he once interviewed them when he was on Nickelodeon. While he didn’t specify the year, Will appeared on the channel from 1988 to 1991 and was best known for being the host of the live, interactive series Don’t Just Sit There.
Will would have been aged between 11 and 14 years during this window of time, and Mary-Kate and Ashley would have been between two and five years old.
“I interviewed them when I was on Nickelodeon,” Will began, and when Rider expressed his shock that the girls would have “only been five” at the time, Will interjected: “If that!”
“The woman, their handler, had two Dixie cups taped together with M&Ms in them,” Will went on. “And whenever their gaze would go somewhere else, she’d go and shake the thing, and they would snap back to it; it was weird.”
“I always heard they were trained by food,” Rider replied. “That’s why every shot of them is a single, and they are waiting to get a cookie if they say the line correctly, or an M&M, or whatever.”
And Rider could not hide his discomfort at what the Olsen twins went through at such a young age as the episode progressed, with the trio recapping a Season 2 episode of Full House called “Our Very First Christmas Show,” which premiered in December 1988 — six months after Mary-Kate and Ashley’s second birthday.
Circling back to Will’s earlier comment, Danielle clarified: “They weren’t giving them the M&Ms, they were shaking it like [they were] a dog.”
“That’s just to get their eye contact, but once they said the line correctly, they got a cookie or an M&M,” Rider explained. “I’m sorry, it made me very uncomfortable every time it cut to the Olsen twins, I got very uncomfortable. I just kept imagining… Because what are we looking at?! We are looking at a child being tortured.”
“I’m, like, watching a baby being told: ‘OK, go,’” he went on. “It was like watching a performing monkey. I’m sorry, I’m not cool with this.”
“‘Tortured’ is a bit far,” Will countered. “But I don’t disagree that I felt uncomfortable… Because we’ve been there, because we know the situation, we know that the camera’s on them, that they’re just focusing on them, and: ‘Say your line. And now let’s say it again. And now let’s say it again…’ like, we know what it takes, so it made me uncomfortable as well.”
“You’re looking at a baby that literally has no way of knowing what it’s doing or why it’s saying the things that it’s saying,” Rider went on before comparing the twins to Jodie, who was six years old at the time. “When I see Jodie, I’m looking at a very precocious kid, who you can tell has a light behind her eyes, that is conscious of what she is saying.”
“And even if it takes a little bit for somebody to read the lines to her and work with her, she’s capable. I’m seeing a kid, I’m seeing an actor,” he continued. “But the Olsen twins, you’re watching, like, essentially a non-thinking animal do a thing, and that’s uncomfortable. I’m sorry!”
What do you make of it all? As always, let me know in the comments below!
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