A Brief History of the Behind-the-Scenes ‘Brady Bunch’ Dating Drama

The Brady Bunch was groundbreaking in its depiction of divorce, blended families and shared beds, but there was one reality that the series resolutely ignored. In real life, if you throw an equally paired group of mixed-gender, heterosexual kids together in the same household and add puberty, what you get is less Brady Bunch and more Bang Bus. 1996’s A Very Brady Sequel spoofed this obvious blind spot by throwing some sexual tension into Greg and Marcia’s fight over the attic bedroom, but even that was pretty neutered by reality’s standards, because of course, in reality, “we all hooked up,” according to Greg Brady actor Barry Williams.

Possibly the most shocking behind-the-scenes Brady relationship drama was its most Freudian, if also a bit overblown. Maureen McCormick wrote in her memoir of having “a huge crush on Robert Reed,” her TV stepdad, to the point that she “really wanted to marry him,” but that didn’t work out for her for, you know, just so many reasons. On the other hand, Williams did once take his TV stepmom, Florence Henderson, out on a date despite being underage and her being married. “That whole thing with Barry got blown way out of proportion,” she later said, describing a trip to a hotel lounge to see a singer, ending with “a nice little peck.” “The crush was a very serious thing for him, so I was never condescending,” she explained. 

Still weird! Especially after he admitted to masturbating to photos of her. And then that he “stopped dating my TV mom and started dating my TV sister.”

McCormick described her relationship with Williams, which began in earnest while filming the Hawaii episodes of Season Four, in slightly less crude fashion. “As soon as I stepped off the plane, I started to think about him more intensely in the way I had fantasized for a long time,” she said. After they kissed following a sunset walk on the beach, they maintained an on-again, off-again relationship until the series was canceled the following season. Even the little ones would “make out in the dog house when we were nine,” according to Cindy Brady actress Susan Olsen, who also “had a little mock wedding” to Bobby Brady actor Michael Lookinland, according to Williams. 

Okay, that’s actually really cute.

Olsen further shared that “Eve (who played Jan Brady) always had a crush on Chris (Peter Brady), they did kind of hook up later on,” leading to the urgent question: “Kind of”? 

Christopher Knight elaborated in 1995 that he once took Eve Plumb to a sort of makeout point, but they were interrupted by police before anything could really happen, which is a real indictment of today’s tabloid culture, legal ethics or both. Nowadays, the National Enquirer would be scrambling to swipe their cards for the rights to the headline, “Peter, Peter, Peter!”