John Stamos addresses Teri Copley's claim that she didn't cheat on him with Tony Danza: 'I was busted up'
John Stamos is responding to his ex-girlfriend Teri Copley's claim that she and the Full House star were no longer together when she had a sexual encounter with Tony Danza.
In his new memoir If You Would Have Told Me, Stamos recalls dating the model-actress in the '80s and the heartbreak that he felt after discovering her sleeping naked in bed with Danza one day. In a statement to PEOPLE published Monday, Copley denied ever cheating on Stamos, telling the outlet that the pair had broken up by the time that the incident occurred.
Stamos, however, remembers the situation a little differently. "She came out yesterday or I think the day before and said we were broken up. And I don't think she told me that," he said on Tuesday's episode of the Howard Stern Show. "I was busted up, man."
In the book, Stamos describes the moment that he stopped by Copley's house and found his girlfriend of over a year with Danza as "my worst nightmare." As he told host Howard Stern, "I walked in and they were in bed together. I saw four feet coming out of the sheet. I was so brokenhearted."
Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images John Stamos and Teri Copley
The General Hospital alum explained that part of the reason why he included the experience in the book is because he wanted to "highlight some of the relatable issues" that he'd experienced throughout his life.
"People thought like, who's going to cheat on Stamos? Well, it's happened more than once," Stamos said. "The real reason why I put that story in there was to, well, to be relatable, but also the end of the story was this: I remember walking in and I see them, and was like, 'I'm gonna kick this guy's ass.' Then I kind of saw his abs and I'm like, 'I'm gonna run.'"
But, as he similarly acknowledged in the book, Stamos noted that all's well that ends well because Danza's show, Who's the Boss, later played a pivotal role in getting Full House greenlit for a second season.
"They said, 'We're going to try one thing — we're going to put Full House on during summer reruns and put you behind one of our hit shows, and if you gather an audience and bring it to the second season we'll pick you up and we'll keep it going,'" he said. "Well, that's exactly what happened, but the show that they put on as our lead-in was Who's the Boss? So he f---ed me over here, but without Tony, I'm not sure that that show would have made it past season 1."
Stamos is also well aware that Danza, who was a professional boxer, "would have killed me" if he had attempted to confront him at the time. "I was mad at her. I was very, very hurt. But he dated her, I guess, before me. I don't blame her," he confessed. "I was 19, 20, whatever. I was like a kid. My naïveté is really what's helped me over the years because I just went into stuff like a dummy. But these girls, I couldn't keep up with them."
He concluded, "I wanted to highlight this, you know, turning from a caterpillar into a butterfly because I was gawky. I wanted to be a puppeteer. I did magic and puppets and these girls thought I was a joke."
If You Would Have Told Me is available now.
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