John Stamos explains why he was so eager to play Iron Man

John Stamos revealed that fatherly love informed his role of Iron Man in Spidey and His Amazing Friends.

In an interview with Collider, the Full House alum stated that, since he viewed his own father (Bill Stamos) as his superhero, he used him as a model for the newest on-screen iteration of Tony Stark. However, that came after he tried to do an impression of the MCU’s Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., and the producers nixed it:

“I came in doing a little bit of Robert Downey, the speech pattern. They said, ‘no, no, no, no, no, don’t do anything. John, do you as Iron Man.’ It took me a few minutes. The thing that I latched onto first was the mentor quality of him. My father died pretty young . . . My dad was my superhero. You know how you get to a point where you get older, and you go, ‘Ah, he’s just a man. He’s a human.’ He was always a superhero to me. He was always the coolest dude. He was bigger than life. He was my superhero. I never got into comic books or things. I had to educate myself on it this time.”

That, in turn, made another generation of Stamos view his father as a superhero, which, as all dads know, is a difficult task:

“[My son] is four. I’ve spent his entire life trying to convince him, hope that his dad is cool, and it hasn’t [worked]. . . I remember sitting there watching Spidey and His Amazing Friends with him going, ‘This is such a cute show.’ You want to watch things before your kids do. Then, when I became Iron Man, boy, he thought that was the coolest thing.”

Papa Stamos will voice an adult version of Iron Man among kid versions of other superheroes in the Season 2 premiere of Spidey and His Amazing Friends, which will air on Aug. 19 on Disney Junior. We hope he’ll fly even higher in his son’s eyes that day.