Candace Cameron Bure Is the Big Sister We All Need Right Now
You could never tell that Candace Cameron Bure only got three hours of sleep last night.
She arrives bright and beaming to the set of her Good Housekeeping cover photo shoot in late January around 10:45 a.m. after appearing on two morning TV shows just a few hours prior. Wearing a poppy-red dress and a full face of makeup, Candace greets everyone before taking a seat on a stool inside the studio. Straightening her dress over her knees, she politely asks for a cup of tea and then lets out a celebratory exhale: For a brief moment during an otherwise jam-packed day of on-camera appearances and hosting events to promote her new children's book, Grow Candace Grow, Candace is ready to reflect on it all — her past, present, and future projects.
Fuller House, the Netflix series that wrapped filming its fifth and final season in November, is the most obvious one. Though Candace captured a lot of hugs and hearty tears on social media in the days leading up to (and on the day of) the finale taping, she's currently at a place where she can discuss it without getting emotional. That said, when the last few episodes of season 5 become available on Netflix on June 2, it might be a different story.
"I don't think the reality has hit yet. And I don't think it will until probably the summertime that we're not coming back," Candace says while settling into her chair. "I'm definitely more at ease now than I was when we finished filming. But it was rough at the end."
And understandably so. For the past few years, acting in — and sometimes directing — the reboot of the famous '90s sitcom Full House has been a huge source of joy for Candace. The realization that this could be the final bow for her beloved TV character D.J. Tanner is difficult to process. But even still, Candace is looking at the positive side of it all — even though the series is ending, her close relationships with her co-stars, including Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber, certainly aren't.
"The three of us video chat. I talk to them every day. We Marco Polo. We love Marco Polo," she reveals while smiling to herself. "And in the big group texts, there are different groups, I talk with John [Stamos], Bob [Saget], and Dave [Coulier] too."
And so, the show goes on for Candace via GIF and emoji exchanges. What also helps her is knowing that when Full House went off the air in 1995, it wasn't really over for the fans, and it likely never will be. Although she may not ever sit on the checkered blue-and-white Tanner couch again, Candace realizes that to many, she'll always be "Deej" — and that's comforting to know.
"If I am forever known as D.J. Tanner and everyone's big sister, I will be thrilled and happy," she explains. "Full House and Fuller House have brought so much joy, comfort, and love to so many people. There's nothing more I want to be associated with than wonderful and positive things. I embrace the show as an adult just as I embraced it back when I was 10 years old."
Reflecting on her early Full House days, Candace says she felt very much like D.J. during that time in her life — an "average, typical American kid" who, like any teenager, was just trying to figure it all out. Unlike some turbulent stories of child actors in Hollywood, Candace relays only good memories about her time growing up on camera.
"There wasn't a big focus on image and beauty from producers, so I didn't pay that much attention to it [on set]," she recalls. "It was the same with my family and my agents. I never had people around me telling me that I had to look a certain way or be a certain weight, and I think that's half of the battle."
But while working on the show, there was one actress whose appearance she admired in particular. "Right in front of me, Lori Loughlin was always such a standard of beauty. She’s so incredibly beautiful."
It's the only time Candace name drops Lori, saying she'd "rather not comment" on anything related to her co-star's absence in the last season of Fuller House (and, by extension, the former When Calls the Heart actress's involvement in the college admissions scandal that's been in the headlines). Candace has made it clear that she considers Lori "a dear and close friend," and she gracefully prefers to leave it at that. That said, she lights up when asked about other cast members of the show — in particular, her forever TV dad.
"Bob was my mentor growing up on the set. Not just because he played a dad, but because he is a dad, so he was very nurturing to us kids and making sure we were protected and everything was great," Candace recalls.
Uncle Joey also left an indelible mark on her: "Dave was just a lot of fun. Dave was like the uncle growing up. So he took me to the circus, he took me to my first hockey game. They were all great [including John]. I learned so much from them."
It was these lessons from her childhood mentors that she would apply when she took on other ventures beyond the living room walls of the Tanners' San Francisco townhouse. In 2008, she starred in Moonlight and Mistletoe, her first of now 23 Hallmark movies. Six years later, she waltzed and jived her way to third place on Dancing With the Stars. Before she knew it, she was expanding her horizons yet again in 2015, accepting a job on The View alongside Raven-Symoné, Michelle Collins, Paula Faris, Joy Behar, and Whoopi Goldberg.
"That was a super tough job," she immediately points out when The View is mentioned. "It helped me grow a lot, but that was the most difficult job I've had to date."
Staying up to date on politics was, in itself, "tiring." But moreover, she says there was also the added stress of feeling like many people in the room — the co-hosts and the New York City-based audience — were probably not going to agree with her conservative point of view: "It's harder, so you always feel like you're fighting to speak your opinion."
Challenges aside, Candace is open to doing a talk show again — though, maybe something "a little lighter and more fun" next time. After all, family entertainment is much more her jam.
"The values that my parents instilled in me included family being the most important thing. And so I always knew, even in my early 20s, that it wasn't my goal to do something that I felt kids or my own parents couldn't watch — even if a role was amazing. Because of that, I've said 'no' a lot over the years."
It's clear Candace lives by the saying "family is everything." In fact, you may have noticed that there's a small gap in Candace's career, between the late '90s and mid-2000s. That's because Candace spent those years focusing on raising a family with her husband of almost 24 years, NHL star Valeri Bure (they have three children together, Natasha, 21, Lev, 20, and Maksim, 18). It was then that Candace moved to Canada for Val's hockey career and deliberately decided to take a break from the entertainment business after Natasha was born.
Candace recalls this time in her life being particularly difficult, despite some parts being "really wonderful." She went from the steady comfort of working — since she was five — to suddenly being thrown "into a world she knew nothing about — a housewife, a hockey wife, and soon after, a mom," as she noted in her 2011 book Reshaping It All: Motivation for Physical and Spiritual Fitness. When Val was on the road, loneliness began to set in and Candace turned to food for comfort — and binging eventually lead to an eating disorder: bulimia.
"I guess a lot of young people go to college during that season of their life to figure things out, and that was what that time was for me," Candace remembers. "My early 20s were a time of discovery. I felt like a hot mess and I needed that time to find the path I wanted."
But things did turn around for her, thanks to her faith, family, and friends.
"I later started putting pieces together and actually figuring out what was important to me once I had my children."
Over time, Candace also started to view the gym differently. Getting in a workout became self care for the actress and a way to get stronger and healthier, not just lose weight. Her passion for fitness also helped her maintain a more positive relationship with her body. Seeing what her body was able to accomplish gave her motivation to keep taking care of it. To this day, she'll try to get in hour-long workouts four to five days a week to keep both her body and mind in a balanced place.
"I'm 44 and I love that I'm getting stronger physically as I get older. When I was younger and my focus was on just losing weight, I hated going to the gym. But now I love to lift weights and dance. It wasn't about restriction anymore, and that was a total game changer. Now, I just feel really good."
Today, Candace is "100%" in a more confident place. She's 44, adjusting to life as an empty nester, and, true to her go-go-go nature, has her hands full with projects again. In January, she was busy promoting Grow, Candace, Grow while also filming her 13th and 14th Aurora Teagarden Mystery movies for Hallmark.
Of course, she's now spending her days at home in Malibu, California with her family in quarantine, but she's looking at potentially filming three more Aurora Teagarden Mystery movies with Hallmark in the fall and a "couple more" Christmas movies. On top of that, she heads up her faith-inspired product line, the Candace Cameron Bure Collection, and her production company, Candy Rock Entertainment, which produces and develops scripted and unscripted lifestyle programming primarily in the family friendly content arena. She hopes to add a few directing gigs to her to-do list, as well.
Though not every morning for Candace requires a crack-of-dawn wake-up call like the one Good Housekeeping spent with her, she's long been known for her inspiring juggling act of being a working actress, talk show host, mom, wife, author, and the face of various brands — but, hey, she's definitely not complaining.
"The work keeps me going. I love what I do. It's what energizes me. I love pushing myself and I have big dreams and I just, I go after them," she explains. "And this year is a year to bloom and grow, and that's what I intend to do."
It's now a little before noon on her January press day, and she's asked to start changing into her first outfit for our May issue cover shoot. With that brilliant D.J. Tanner smile we all know so well lighting up her face, Candace gets up from the stool and walks over to the changing area, ready for her next move.
You Might Also Like
