The actress who played Cindy on the 1970s sitcom “The Brady Bunch” says a planned reboot in 2019 was scrapped because her conservative views clashed with the woke family values of the updated series.
Susan Olsen, 63, spilled the tea behind the planned revival during a podcast interview released by the #WalkAway Campaign this month. The youngest Brady sibling said the new series would have included Black and transgender characters, but the brass at CBS pulled the plug after they discovered that she had been fired from her talk radio show in 2016 for going on a “homophobic rant.”
“Wow, I’ve been canceled,” she said. “A role that I’ve played for over 50 years, I can’t play it now because I’m too dangerous.”
According to Ms. Olsen, the Tiffany Network started planning a revival after the Brady clan reunited for the HGTV series “A Very Brady Renovation,” which brought the home improvement channel record-high ratings at the time.
She added that they were going to follow the formula that comedian Rosanne Barr had used for a revival of her 1990s sitcom “Rosanne,” in which real-life personalities and political views influenced their on-screen characters.
Ms. Olsen’s character, Cindy, was to be a Libertarian podcaster, while Eve Plumb’s character, Jan Brady, would have a transgender child.
“I was hoping to continue what Roseanne Barr had set out to do, which I really liked,” she said to podcast host Brandon Straka. “Her reboot had a family with completely different political opinions, and in the end, they all love and respect each other.”
Early in the production process, though, Ms. Olsen says that CBS executives learned about comments she had made a few years earlier that caused her to be fired from her talk radio show.
Ms. Olsen was fired after using a gay slur in a private message to actor Leon Acord-Whiting on Facebook. She said the openly gay actor was campaigning to have her fired from a Los Angeles radio station for publicly supporting President Trump in his 2016 bid to become president. Mr. Acord-Whiting had screenshotted the message, in which she called him a f—-t and a p—y.
The executives asked that she take a political correctness course before they moved forward with the project. She agreed, citing that she thought it would help green-light the show.
She says despite her willingness to accommodate their requests, executives did a deeper dive to see if there were any other instances of political incorrectness and learned that she was outspoken on various hot-button issues, including the Covid vaccine, mandates, and masks.
Just before the network pulled the plug, she was forced to meet with the show’s producers in what she likened to an “inquisition” as they grilled her on her stance on an array of issues, including transgender children.
Ms. Olsen says that the reboot’s cancellation led to a disagreement with Ms. Plumb, and they are no longer on speaking terms.
“I think she feels betrayed,” she said.
