‘Brady Bunch' Star Says ‘Nobody Cared' About the Show When They Were Filming in the '70s
Eve Plumb revealed that no one cared about The Brady Bunch when it was being filmed in the early 1970s-including studio executives.
During a May 2026 interview with Houston Public Media, the former ABCsitcom star recalled that the show was filmed at a fast pace, with two episodes completed per week at one point, to get the Brady cast off the Paramount studio lot.
"They did because we were the ones that nobody cared about," Plumb, 68, explained in the interview. "You know, Mod Squad was on the lot and Odd Couple. So that's where the money was going, and so they literally tried …we did it. We made two episodes a week. It lasted about 10 minutes because it was just too hard."
Plumb noted that The Brady Bunch scripts were 20 to 25 pages and that it took "about an hour" to shoot one page of dialogue for the single-camera sitcom.
"We did become known as the ‘one-take Bradys.' … It doesn't allow for art or exploration, but gets it in the can," she added.
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Plumb, who played middle child Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974, also shared that her TV father, Robert Reed, took issue with the show's unrealistic shooting dynamic, which often included the whole family in one scene.
In a Q&A at a bookstore in New York City to promote her memoir, Happiness Included, Plumb explained, "At one point, yes, we were called the one-shot Brady's because they were always pressuring us to go faster, faster, faster to save money. Because we were the poor stepchild on the lot. Which is surprising because we had the biggest stage of a lot. We were just shooting so quickly, and that's one of the things that Robert Reed was always fighting against, was saying, you know, they would just line us up. ‘Line them up and shoot them.' And he's like, ‘People don't stand around their living rooms like this.'"
"They tried to make us do an episode in two and a half days instead of five to save money," Plumb added. "So, you know, we were always the ones that were having to pay."
While The Brady Bunch remains a TV classic-it has never been off the air in 50 years- Plumb told The Morning Show that the cast members "never felt like big stars" when the show originally aired.
"It never really hit the big ratings," she said. "It was never really well thought of in the critiques. Everybody sort of looked down on it as fluff and not serious fare."
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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 10:06 AM.