TV dad John Stamos is becoming one IRL.
For years, fans have watched the actor take on dad duties for the kids of “Full House,” but now he’s expecting his first child with fiancée Caitlin McHugh. For now, the couple isn’t sharing the baby’s sex.
Stamos, 54, who popped the question at Disneyland in October after two years of dating, revealed that he’s wanted a family of his own for some time but didn’t know if it was ever going to happen.
“I always wanted to be a dad. Clearly I had to do some work on myself first,” Stamos exclusively told People. “I have a youthful thing. People say, ‘Oh, you look young.’ You start believing you’re gonna live to be 150. And then you wake up and go, ‘No, man, this is it. This is not a rehearsal.’ … People would say, ‘You should have a child.’ I was like, ‘That ship has sailed.’”
But when he met McHugh, an actress who’s appeared on shows including “The Vampire Diaries,” everything changed.
“We have the same morals and the same values, that all clicked nicely. So we said, ‘Oh, well, maybe we should have a family,’” he explained.
McHugh, 31, said she joked that he was “old,” so they should probably get started sooner than later, and the rest is history.
The two discovered that they were expecting before the engagement, but Stamos says he popped the question soon after because it was the “right thing to do.”
“The look on John’s face when I told him we were pregnant was priceless,” McHugh told the outlet. “It was the look of a man who has wanted a family of his own but wasn’t sure it was going to happen for him. Now it is!”
Stamos admits that he wasn’t always in the right headspace to have a child, having experienced a series of setbacks since divorcing from actress Rebecca Romijn in 2005 and after the death of his mother Loretta in 2014. He was charged for driving under the influence last year and immediately entered rehabilitation for substance abuse.
“I just lost sight of who I was, who I should be,” he admitted. “You start compromising your beliefs. It just gets further and further. Then you go, ‘Wait a minute.’”
Now, he’s ready to tackle perhaps the toughest role of his career, but he feels prepared.
“I’ll be a fun dad. I’ve been practicing for a long time,” he says, joking, “I’ve done every schtick you can do with a baby on TV … all the bits and jokes and diaper gags. I’ll probably just do all that stuff.”
To read Stamos’ full interview, head over to People.