Jodie Sweetin has reaped the benefits of fame, but during her lowest of lows, she was barely making ends meet.
“[It’s] not like I was ever a materialistic person,” Sweetin, 44, said during the Wednesday, November 4, episode of the “We’re Still Here, Babe” podcast. “But you learn humility when you are at Target and you’ve got to turn around and go, you know, put some s*** back, ‘cause you don’t have the money on your debit card.”
The actress recalled that after finding success as Stephanie Tanner on Full House from 1987 to 1995, she had to face her drug and alcohol addiction head on. Sweetin got sober in 2011, but soon realized that the money she had from the hit sitcom was “gone” so she started working as a logistics coordinator at a treatment center in Los Angeles.
It was during that time, Sweetin said she learned a lot about herself and what she could achieve outside of acting.
“I was happy. I think part of the reason I was able to come back into the [entertainment] business and enjoy it truly was is that I had gone completely in the other direction,” she recalled. “I was working a normal job.”
The Hallmark actress noted that she “had no money” while working at the treatment center and raising her two daughters, Zoie, 18, and Beatrix, 16, as a single mom. (Sweetin shares Zoie with second husband Cody Herpin and Beatrix with third husband Morty Coyle.)
“I lived in a one and a half bedroom apartment with the kids,” Sweetin recalled. “I was making like $2,200 a month and my parents were paying half my rent. I was just trying to get by. Drove an old used car.”
The former child star, who married her fourth husband, Mescal Wasilewski, in 2022, revealed that she chose to look at her “normal job” as a blessing.
“I didn’t have [an] ego about it,” Sweetin explained. “I didn’t care that I was quote, unquote, working a normal job. I think other people again were like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I was like, ‘Paying my bills. Kids don’t pay for themselves.’”
The Jane Mysteries star ultimately learned to embrace life outside of the spotlight, admitting, “I was like, I would be fine doing this if this is what I’m going to do, cool. And I just threw myself into being as fully present as I could be and that old you know ‘bloom where you’re planted’ kind of vibe.”
Sweetin continued, “Like, if this is what it is, then I’m going to make it good, and I’m going to have fun, and I’m going to enjoy it.”
She added that with time she “learned to be really happy and I loved my life.”
Sweetin noted, “I have had and I have definitely not had, and I’ve learned to exist in both. Now does money make certain problems much easier, yes. Does it make other things much harder? Yes.”
Because of her positive headspace, Sweetin said she was “good” with the idea of never acting again but her luck changed when Netflix’s Fuller House was greenlit.
“I was very much straddling that line while pitching the show,” Sweetin said of her financial insecurity ahead of the show’s 2016 premiere. (Fuller House ran from 2016 to 2020 and followed Stephanie Tanner and big sister D.J. Tanner, played by Candace Cameron Bure, and their lives as adults.)
In fact, her situation was quite scary before she started seeing a consistent paycheck.
“I had to borrow money the first week I was working on Fuller House and I skidded into my first paycheck with like $190 in my bank account,” Sweetin recalled. “And nobody that I worked with knew that. Not that I cared.”
Looking back, she said, “I’ve been very fortunate to know a lot of really wonderful things,” but when times get tough, “your ego can’t be involved in it.”
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