Barry Williams Reveals Why It Was "Awkward" on the "Brady Bunch" Set
Between puberty, fame, and a handful of crushes, filming the show wasn't always easy.
Going through puberty is difficult enough in the privacy of your own home and the halls of your school, but growing up in front of America's eyes presents a slew of additional challenges. Any teenager who came of age on the set of a TV show will understand the struggle Barry Williams of The Brady Bunch recently described. The star who played Greg Brady said that being on set was sometimes "awkward" and "intense." Read on for more of Williams' memories of filming.
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Barry Williams said his years on The Brady Bunch "were very intense."
Many of the cast members from The Brady Bunch have been candid about their experience on set in the decades since the show was on the air. Recently, Williams detailed some of his awkward behind-the-scenes memories while on the Australian morning show Today Extra. "The years were very intense years for me," Williams recalled. "All my teen years, 14 to 20, were on The Brady Bunch."
And Williams wasn't the only one who had this experience: The five other actors playing his siblings could sympathize. The former Greg Brady said that with all those pubescent teenagers, things could get weird. "There were a lot of changes," Williams continued. "You could hear the voice changing. You could see the hair changing. You could see the growth spurts going on with all of us. So, it was sometimes awkward and sometimes fun. But I've always enjoyed people watching the show."
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Williams had a crush on his TV mom.
To make matters even more awkward, there were a few behind-the-scenes romances. In Williams' book Growing Up Brady, he admitted he had a crush on his onscreen mom, Florence Henderson. The actor blamed it on "those little things called hormones," and said he "just wanted to spend time with her." Williams eventually took her out on a "date," but at the time, Henderson was a married mother of four.
"That whole thing with Barry got blown way out of proportion," Henderson wrote on her website, per Biography. "I guess, in a sense, it was a date because Barry thought it was. But of course, I had no idea that his intentions were to 'date' me. It has made for a good story, though!"
And he had a real relationship with his onscreen sister.
Marcia and Greg were the oldest of the Brady clan, so naturally those actors were in the thick of those magic changes. Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia, described the intimate relationship she and Williams shared off-camera in her book Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice. She said that she and her TV brother shared their first kiss on the beach while filming the Hawaii episodes in Season 4 of the series.
"There was so much electricity between us that I felt the hair on my arms stand up every time we got close to each other," McCormick wrote. "I thought about Barry even when I had other scenes with other guys. I used to ask myself how I could ever look in eyes other than his liquid blues and feel such love." The two never maintained a lasting relationship, but were on-and-off for a while. "The timing was off," McCormick reflected.
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According to Susan Olsen, all of the cast members paired up.
Susan Olsen, who played the youngest of the Brady siblings, Cindy, told news.com.au that all of the kids "hooked up" on set. "We led a sheltered life for part of the year, so if there was anybody to crush on or try to date, it would be our counterparts," she revealed. Olsen said each actor ended up with the onscreen sibling closest in age at some point.
"So, I had Mike, and we used to make out in the doghouse when we were nine. Eve always had a crush on Chris—they did kind of hook up later on. And, of course, there was Maureen and Barry," she shared.
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