John Stamos Still Has No Regrets About ‘Brutally Honest’ Memoir

It’s been nearly a year since John Stamos released his candid memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, but he still has no regrets about spilling the tea.

“The week that it came out, I called my publicist and I was crying. I’m like, ‘What did I do?’” the actor, 61, exclusively recalls in the new issue of Us Weekly. “And this saying came to me: anything less than the truth is paralysis. … I know it sounds corny, but it sets you free.”

The Full House alum goes on to note that he “could have told a lot stories out of school” about people, but he wanted the book to remain mostly about his own journey.

“Why badmouth somebody or why embarrass someone?” he asks. “Talking about myself was one thing and being brutally honest with myself, but about other people?”

Stamos was also committed to recording the audiobook himself — and put in a lot more hours than the average actor does when reading back their memoirs.

“I’m really proud of that audio,” he tells Us. “That was one of the things I looked most forward to, was doing the audiobook. I said, ‘Well, how long is that gonna take?’ And they said, ‘Oh, you know, you get done in probably five or six days.’ I took 37 days to do it. … It was very emotional and very difficult.”

Fans who read the hardcover edition but haven’t listened to the audiobook may be in for a few surprises, as Stamos says his producers allowed him to make a few changes along the way.

“I said, ‘Can I change?’ They said, ‘You could change the sentence here,’” he recalls. “I did so much rewriting, they wanted to kill me. I moved stuff around. I moved chapters around. I took stuff out. I put stuff in. … But I loved it. And it’s very cathartic, I think. You’re in this little booth, almost like a confessional or something.”

The paperback edition of If You Would Have Told Me, out Tuesday, October 22, includes a new chapter detailing a scary incident on the set of Full House — and a tense run-in with Mickey Rourke in the 1980s. Stamos hasn’t seen Rourke, 72, in the years since, but he recently discovered they share a unique connection.

“I just found out a couple weeks ago that my lawyer was his lawyer for a long, long time,” he quips to Us. “I said, ‘Oh, he always wanted to beat me up!’”

For more with Stamos, watch the video above and pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now.