“The Brady Bunch” star Susan Olsen admitted she disliked her character Cindy Brady, whom she began playing when she was 7 years old.
The 64-year-old actress portrayed the youngest Brady child in the hit sitcom from 1969 to 1974. While Cindy was popular with many of the show’s viewers, Olsen shared that she was not a fan of the character.
“As a child, I didn’t like Cindy,” Olsen admitted during a recent interview with People magazine.
She continued, “I used to say I wouldn’t even have her for a friend, because she was a tattletale.”
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“She was kind of stupid. That was basically it. I thought she wasn’t bright at all,” Olsen added.
The actress noted that she had previously pointed out the “very clear” differences between herself and Cindy.
“I really shouldn’t be taking a dump all over this lovable character, but as a child, being stupid wasn’t cute,” she said. “I didn’t know why that was cute.”
Though she later came to understand the producers’ motivations for how they developed the character, Olsen told People that playing Cindy was awkward for her when she was a child star. She went on to recall that some of Cindy’s lines made her a target for bullying at school.
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“I probably understood it by the time I was a teenager, but when I was 9, the problem is I would do these things on the show, and in the back of my head was like, ‘Okay, how much am I going to get teased for this when I go back to school?’” Olsen said. “Cindy would say something stupid, and then I’d go to school.”
Olsen remembered that facing the other children at school was particularly difficult after the second-season episode “A Fistful of Reasons” aired. In the episode, Cindy was repeatedly teased over her lisp by the school bully Buddy Hinson.
The actress said her lisp was real and the show’s writers incorporated it into her character. However, Olsen told People that having her lisp become a major plot point of an episode “gave all kinds of ammo to my bullies.”
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Though Olsen said that she had a supportive group of friends at school, she told People that other children were “horrible,” recalling that they mocked her “mercilessly” over Cindy’s lines and actions.
“I was grateful that I wasn’t being teased for something bad,” she said. “It was something they were jealous of, and there were incidents that showed me why they were jealous, and I totally understood it,” she said.
“I thought, well, you know, I don’t blame them,” Olsen added. “I’d be jealous of me, too, because look at the fun I have. I led two lives, and I never let the paths cross.”
After “The Brady Bunch” ended, Olsen reprised her role as Cindy in the variety show “The Brady Bunch Hour” from 1976 to 1977 and the TV movies, 1981’s “The Brady Girls Get Married” and 1990’s “The Bradys.” Olsen also voiced the character of Cindy in the animated series “The Brady Kids” from 1972 to 1974.
According to People magazine, Olsen now works as a children’s acting coach at Vibes Performing Arts in Santa Clarita, California.
