“The Brady Brunch” star says revival was canceled because of her controversial comments on Trump, vaccines
"I stand by everything I said," Susan Olsen, who played Cindy Brady on the iconic sitcom, says in new interview.
A modern revival of The Brady Bunch was recently planned, but ultimately fell apart due to one cast member's controversial politics — at least, that's what she says.
Susan Olsen played Cindy Brady on the iconic family sitcom from 1969-1974, and reprised the role in the variety show The Brady Bunch Hour and various follow-up TV specials (though not in 1995's satirical Brady Bunch Movie). In 2019, she reconnected with her surviving costars for the HGTV miniseries A Very Brady Renovation, which depicted the titular renovation of the house used for the sitcom's exterior shots. That series proved popular enough with viewers that development began on a full reboot.
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But in a new interview with the Walk Away Campaign podcast, Olsen (who has become a talk-radio host in the years since The Brady Bunch) says that the reboot was held up by her past remarks on Donald Trump (whom she supports politically), COVID-19 vaccines, and LGBTQ people, among other topics. Olsen thought the remarks were in keeping with the character of Cindy, who she wanted to portray as a right-wing podcaster. Olsen says she offered to take a course in "political correctness," but that CBS wasn't satisfied.
"I am what I was going to portray, so what kind of show would this be if I can't say anything controversial?" Olsen said. "I did have a phone call with my [TV] siblings and my agent. Everybody was saying, 'we're sorry, but they just won't budge. They just will not have you in this.' I was like wow, I've been canceled. A role that I've played for over 50 years, I can't play it now because I'm too dangerous. I was like 'well, okay guys, good luck, I hope you can sell it.'"
Representatives for CBS did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly's request for comment on Olsen's remarks.
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Olsen says that she wanted to model the new Brady Bunch after the 2018 Roseanne revival that "had a family with completely different political opinions, and in the end they all love and respect each other." But Barr was fired in 2018 for controversial tweets, after which the show was redefined as The Conners.
In this revival, Olsen said, Greg Brady (Barry Williams) would have been "a Reagan Republican," Jan Brady would be a liberal, and Cindy would be a libertarian podcaster like Olsen herself.
"I thought it was very important that Cindy was a libertarian, and also that she's a little crazy," Olsen said. "She does some animal rescue, like me. I was so hoping to be the first woman on television since my first female hero, Donna Douglas from The Beverly Hillbillies, to wear an opossum on my shoulder."
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In December 2016, Olsen was fired from her Los Angeles talk radio show, Two Chicks Talkin' Politics, after an altercation with guest Leon Acord-Whiting, who called her "a Trump fanatic" and accused her of spreading "outrageous misinformation." Acord-Whiting then posted a screenshot of a private message Olsen had allegedly sent him on Facebook in which she used homophobic slurs, leading LA Talk Radio to publicly disavow her.
That incident, which Olsen referred to in the new interview as "oh that old thing," was apparently one of CBS' concerns with her involvement, but an internal dossier of Olsen's past comments was apparently "50 pages" long. But she made no apologies for questioning COVID-19 vaccines or saying that children undergoing transgender surgery were doing "irreparable damage to their own body."
"They did a web search, and they came up with 50 pages," Olsen said. "The resounding result was no, we cannot have her in a show. If we go forward with this project, it will not be with her.' To be honest, those 50 pages were my greatest hits. I stand by everything I said."
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.