Susan Olsen Says Stupid Cindy Brady Was Missing A ‘Functioning Brain’
Susan Olsen, the Brady Bunch actress blamed for tanking another revival thanks to her conservative rants, lit up The Real Brady Bros podcast recently with a series of hot takes about her time on the original show. In addition to regrets about not suing Paramount over on-set injuries, she told TV brothers Christopher Knight (Peter), Barry Williams (Greg) and Mike Lookinland (Bobby) that she resented playing the dumbest Brady of them all.
Williams called out Cindy’s stupidity in the kindest way possible, remembering young Olsen as bright and not at all like her Brady character. Especially in the show’s early days, writers found “comedy” in Cindy not understanding, well, just about everything. An example from the first episode, in which mother Carol prepares for her marriage to Mike:
CAROL: To tell the truth, I’ve got a few butterflies in my stomach.
CINDY: Were you sleeping with your mouth open, Mommy?
CAROL: Huh?
CINDY: How did those butterflies get in your stomach?
CAROL: Oh, they’re not real butterflies, sweetheart. I’ll explain it to you later.
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As Olsen recreated the bit on the podcast, Williams stated the obvious: “You’re saying the most idiotic thing imaginable.”
Even at a young age, wondered Knight, didn’t Olsen know the line was moronic? “Oh, yeah,” Olsen replied.
Lookinland summed it up for sitcom viewers everywhere: “Why is Cindy so stupid?”
Olsen was resigned to her fate. “I was seven, but that’s just how my career was. It was something I had to accept.”
Her dialogue was so insipid that Olsen asked her mother if something was wrong with Cindy. “She’s nine years old, and she doesn’t know how to spell her sister’s name,” Olsen complained during an interview with Leith Forrest in 2023. It didn’t help that the kids in Olsen’s public school were merciless. “I would get teased for everything stupid that Cindy did.”
While Williams says young Olsen was intelligent, she found herself typecast as a dim bulb. When Olsen’s son was old enough to watch the TV shows and movies she made as a child, they checked out Disney’s The Boy Who Stole the Elephant. “I have this line… I’m looking at Mark Lester, the British young actor. ‘Why does he talk funny?’” she told her Brady costars. “My brother in the movie says, ‘Because he’s English,’ and I say, ‘What's English?’”
“My son said, ‘So you always play the stupid child.’”
Why did Olsen’s family allow her to take all of the idiot roles? Her mother assured her it was supposed to be “cute.”
“Aw, she doesn’t have a functioning brain,” cooed Olsen, “but she’s cute!”
