Tahj Mowry recalls difficulty of returning to middle school after ‘Smart Guy’

Middle school sucks — even if you’re the star of your own TV show.

Just ask Tahj Mowry, who opened up about his experience returning to school after filming his sitcom Smart Guy in the latest episode of Full House rewatch podcast How Rude, Tanneritos!

Mowry and hosts Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber were discussing the merits of child stars being homeschooled when the unpleasant memories resurfaced. “I’ll never forget. It was the first day of, like, sixth grade,” he said. “I had all the friends in the world, went to go shoot three episodes of Smart Guy, came back — everyone hated me.”

“And I was like, ‘What is happening?'” he continued. “So those dynamics were hard, but I’m grateful for them because I was that kid that got made fun of at school. I was that kid that had to stand up for myself at school. And so I’m able to have sympathy. I was able to grow in that way. So I’m grateful for [the experience].”

Smart Guy, which followed Mowry’s child prodigy character T.J. Henderson, who goes from being a fourth grader to a high school sophomore, aired for three seasons on The WB from April 1997 to May 1999.

On the podcast, Mowry said he also learned a valuable lesson about who his real friends truly are. “And then learning how to discern who your real friends are and not just for, like, what you do,” he told Barber and Sweetin. “You know? Because I had to learn that. Like, ‘Oh, you’re on a TV show. Cool. I’ll be your friend.’ But, like, ‘Are you really my friend, though? Like, do you like me, though?'”

He was then asked if, middle school troubles aside, it was ultimately still fun to play such a “super genius kid.” Mowry admitted it was “definitely” cool, and it was the first time he was playing a character specifically created around him.

“So that was fun to know that, oh, this environment was sort of created around me, but I never felt the pressure of that,” he said, adding, “A lot of people ask that. I never felt it because, you know, the home life was great. So grateful for that. I always felt safe and looked after.”

The Baby Daddy star then admitted the most challenging part of the role: knowing the definition of the words his character was saying. “I can’t just be saying these words that I don’t know what they mean. So I had someone specifically on set that would be working with me with my lines to know, ‘Okay. Do you know what that word means? This is what this means,'” he recalled, adding with a laugh, “It was SAT training before I even knew what SATs were.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Mowry talks about his favorite memories on Full House — he played Michelle Tanner’s BFF, Teddy — his experiences working on The Muppets Mayhem and Kim Possible, and more.