You probably know Susan Olsen from her childhood career as the sweet little Cindy Brady from the 1970s show The Brady Bunch. She played a precocious, curious child and is mostly remembered as a little sweetheart. The adult Olsen is a completely different person, and her political views completely tanked a Brady Bunch revival.
The Brady Bunch aired from 1969-1974, and she reprised the role over the years in different productions. In 2016, she was fired from a radio job after a guest accused her of parroting “outrageous misinformation” and supporting Donald Trump.
She fired back at the guest on Facebook, saying “What a true piece of s**t you are! Lying f****t! I hope you meet your karma SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY.” However, by 2019 she got together with the rest of her living castmates for an HGTV show called A Very Brady Renovation. That show was enough of a hit that talk inevitably started on a reboot.
Earlier this month, Olsen appeared on the Walk Away Campaign podcast on an episode called “How Wokeness Killed The Brady Bunch” and revealed what happened to the reboot.
Apparently, Olsen wanted Cindy to be a right-wing podcaster. She seemed to be the only one excited about that idea. In the past, she has shared her opinion on vaccines, gay people, and how she loved Trump, and shocker, CBS Studios didn’t really like the idea. To convince the network, Olsen said, she told CBS she would take a “political correctness” course. Here’s another shocker: they didn’t go for it.
“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 about the reboot, because yeah, when we think Brady Bunch the first thing that comes to mind is controversy.
On a call with the rest of the cast and her agent, Olsen said she was told that the studio couldn’t get on board with the idea.
“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.'”
What a bummer! Olsen shared just what that reboot would look like: Greg Brady (Barry Williams) would be a “Reagan Republican.” Jan Brady would be a liberal and Olsen would be a libertarian. It would be a show about politics, just like the original. There are bad ideas, then there are bad ideas.
Not making that show was probably the easiest decision CBS ever made. Part of the network’s concern was of course, the time she went off on that guest on her radio show, something she dismisses as “that old thing.” Oh, and the whole skepticism over vaccines and how children were “irreparable damage to their own body” by being transgender.
Does she regret anything? Does it bother her that she lost out on a huge paycheck over her political beliefs? Beliefs she literally could have just shut up about? No, people must know! “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.” Sure, Cindy.