TV Shows
‘The Brady Bunch’ Kids Never Knew They Were Popular Until This Happened
Eve Plumb reveals the ‘Brady Bunch’ cast had no idea how popular they were until album signings drew massive crowds, despite critics dismissing the show as fluff.
The original Brady Bunch series may have only run for five seasons from 1969 to 1974, but during that time, the show became a cultural phenomenon. In ensuing years, the sitcom about a widow with three daughters who married a widow with three sons spawned spin-offs, feature films, animated series, and musical hits. The three daughters and the three sons also became household names pretty quickly, but they didn’t even know it at the time.
Eve Plumb Admits the Truth About the ‘Brady Bunch’ Kids
Eve Plumb was only 11 years old when she landed the role that would change the rest of her life. She had been acting for several years when she was cast as middle daughter, Jan Brady, on a new sitcom that was never really taken seriously at the time. In fact, Plumb admitted on a recent episode of Australia’s The Morning Show that The Brady Bunch was seen as fluff and the critical fanfare was less than stellar.
However, that didn’t mean that the Brady kids, which included Maureen McCormick (Marcia), Barry Williams (Greg), Mike Lookinland (Bobby), Christopher Knight (Peter), and Susan Olsen (Cindy), weren’t popular. They just had to branch outside the confines of Hollywood’s Paramount Studios to discover just what a phenomenon they had become.
“We did realize we were very popular once we started making albums, and we would go out and sign records at a department store on the weekends, and we would get a huge crowd,” Plumb said. “That was when we realized that, yes, it was very popular, but no one at the time, no adult would admit to actually watching The Brady Bunch.”
When she first landed the role, she just thought it was another job and not something that would change her life forever at such a young age.
“I had already been working in television for about four years by the time I got The Brady Bunch,” she added. “I had already done a couple of pilots. So when this started, I had no idea — nobody did — that it was going to last as long as it has.”
In the ensuing years after the original series aired, Plumb would play Jan in four more series, including The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie, The Brady Kids, The Brady Brides and The Bradys, according to IMDb. Most recently, Plumb and the rest of the Brady kids played themselves on HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation.
