A star of The Brady Bunch has said plans for a revival of the beloved sitcom were axed because of her ‘controversial’ views.
Running for five seasons between 1969 and 1974, the American series followed a blended family of two parents and their six kids.
Susan Olsen played the youngest Brady child Cindy, being cast on the show when she was just seven.
In the years after the show ended, many of Susan’s screen roles were related to The Brady Bunch, appearing mostly in specials and variety shows linked to the sitcom.
Although a modern revival was also recently planned, Susan claims it fell apart due to her past remarks on Donald Trump (who she supports politically), Covid-19 vaccines and LGBTQI people.
The actress, who is now a talk-back radio host, said she believed her remarks were in keeping with the character of Cindy, who she wanted to portray as a right-wing podcaster.
Although she offered to take a course in ‘political correctness’, she said broadcaster CBS weren’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?’ she said during an interview on the Walk Away Campaign podcast.
‘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 cancelled.
‘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”.’
Susan said she had wanted to model the new Brady Bunch series 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’.
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However the show’s star Roseanne Barr was fired in 2018 for controversial tweets, after which the show was renamed The Conners.
In her idea for the show, Susan 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 herself.
‘I thought it was very important that Cindy was a libertarian, and also that she’s a little crazy,’ she said.
In 2016 Susan 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’.
The actor and writer then posted a screenshot of a private message Susan had allegedly sent him on Facebook in which she used homophobic slurs.
In her new interview Susan referred to that incident as ‘that old thing’ and said it was apparently one of CBS’ concerns with her involvement in a Brady Bunch revival, as well as having a dossier or her past comments that was ’50 pages long’.
‘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,’ she said.
She added: ‘To be honest, those 50 pages were my greatest hits. I stand by everything I said.’
The last time the surviving Brady Bunch cast reunited on screen was in 2019 for A Very Brady Renovation, which saw the show’s original home transformed.
Metro.co.uk has contacted CBS for comment.
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