Eve Plumb, 67, Reveals What She Really Thought About Her ‘Brady Bunch’ Costars—Plus the ‘Bitter’ Rumors (Exclusive)

For generations of viewers, The Brady Bunch has existed as a kind of television comfort food—bright, optimistic and endlessly watchable. But for the actors who lived inside that world, the experience was far more complex than the pop culture image that developed over time.

In her new memoir, Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond (coming out April 28, 2026, but available now for pre-order), Eve Plumb, 67—best known as Jan Brady—offers a perspective that cuts through decades of assumptions. And perhaps the biggest surprise is just how different the reality of how the show was initially received compares to its reception today.

“Oh yeah,” she says of the series’ now-legendary popularity. “The Brady love never started back then. One of my favorite things is that the TV Guide review of the pilot said, ‘As the six children troop up after their parents to join them on their honeymoon, we hope they never come down again.’”

It’s a line she remembers clearly, in part because it reflected the attitude she encountered growing up. “Adults would tell me, ‘Oh, you’re on this TV show,’ and then they’d say, ‘Well, we don’t watch television.’ So we’ve always dealt with that. And now, to have it be so popular and so beloved by so many people—it’s kind of, like, ‘Well, the heck with you now.’”

That shift—from dismissal to cultural institution—is at the heart of the Brady phenomenon. But it’s also helped shape a number of misconceptions about the cast, particularly when it comes to Plumb herself. For years, there’s been a perception that she kept her distance from the franchise, or even resented it. What really needs to be pointed out is that the actress actually took part on virtually every spin-off, from the animated The Brady Kids to The Brady Brides Get Married, the ill-advised drama The Bradys and even HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation. The only one she was not a part of—to the good fortune of “Fake Jane” Geri Reischel—was 1977’s The Brady Bunch Hour. Yet the “legend” of her negative view has lived on. 

“I think what happened was that I would say things like, ‘Yes, the Bradys was great, but I also have a life.’ Or I’d be promoting something else and the media would be, like, ‘Brady, Brady, Brady,’ and I’d say, ‘That’s great, but I’m doing this now.’ It immediately became, ‘You’re bitter.’”

A changing view of Jan Brady

She did, however, notice something different in the aftermath of A Very Brady Renovation: “Since then,” she muses, “I feel like people see me more as an adult, and that feels better. But it’s always case by case. It’s just something that won’t die, so you respond to each situation as it comes. Attitude is everything. It can be true and you can be angry about it, ignore it or accept it. Acceptance is key. Sometimes you can change your attitude, sometimes you can’t. 

“But it’s funny how that got skewed,” she adds. “It’s one of those things you can’t win and I don’t want to spend my life defending myself. You can’t please everyone, so eventually you have to stop trying. You just do your best to be yourself, speak your truth and not let it get to you.”

The truth about ‘Brady Bunch’ behind-the-scenes tension

That sense of misinterpretation extends beyond her own experience to the show itself, which—despite its wholesome image—was not without its share of behind-the-scenes tension.

Much of that centered on Robert Reed, who played patriarch Mike Brady and famously clashed with creator Sherwood Schwartz over the tone and direction of the series. While those conflicts have become part of Brady lore, Plumb remembers them in a more grounded way. “We knew there was tension,” she says. “You’d hear the door slam, and then we’d go on and do something else. It’s like it is in any family—when there’s discord, you figure out a way to get through it.”

That “family” dynamic is something she returns to often, particularly when describing the adult actors who helped guide the younger cast. “I get flashes of remembering standing next to Florence on the set under the hot lights,” Plumb says of Florence Henderson, who played mom Carol Brady. “There was just this feeling of safety and of respect. You looked to them as an adult, as far as direction goes about what’s going on in the world, because you’re a child and they have to tell you what’s going on.”

‘Mom and Dad’ in real life

Henderson, in particular, left a lasting impression. “She was beautiful, and she smelled good, and we all just admired her,” Plumb recalls. “And she was funny. As we grew up and did those later shows, she could tell a dirty joke—just hilarious. I wish I could remember them, because she was so funny and entertaining. She’s what I call a good celebrity. She was really, really responsible to her fans and to her career and had her rules that worked. She just was a great professional.”

Her relationship with Reed was more distant, shaped largely by their time on the series rather than any close personal connection afterward. “He was very kind and thoughtful and talented,” she says. “He was sophisticated—loved opera, had a gorgeous house in Pasadena. I didn’t know him on a ‘let’s have lunch’ level, but all of my dealings with him were professional and pleasant.”

At the same time, Plumb says Reed sometimes surprised the cast with moments of real generosity—like the time he organized a trip that included New York City and a cruise. “Who does that?” she recalls. “A week at the Plaza for all of us—I don’t know what it cost. I couldn’t do it now.”

How the ‘Brady Bunch’ cast stayed connected over the years

If the show’s original run was defined by its internal rhythms, the decades since have been shaped by its afterlife—one that has brought the cast back together repeatedly, whether for reunions, spin-offs or projects like A Very Brady Renovation. And despite assumptions to the contrary, those relationships remain active—if not always in the public eye.

“Some and some,” Plumb says when asked how connected the group still is. “Chris and his wife Cara, Ken and I have cocktail hour sometimes—we might be having one tonight—so that’s fun.”

There’s also a practical side to that ongoing connection. “Anytime another Brady project comes up, we talk about it,” she explains. “We say, ‘What have you heard? What are they offering you?’ People make the mistake that we don’t talk to each other, but we always do, because we want it to be on an even playing field. Beyond that, one thing that’s good among all of us is that we’re 98% respectful of each other’s privacy. Most of us understand there’s no need to go negative. It doesn’t look good on me to trash them in public, does it? It would go right back to, ‘She’s bitter, she’s trashing them.’ Then people think you have nothing else to talk about.”

One story in the memoir that supports this is when it’s mentioned that Henderson told the cast just before a TV appearance that Plumb had had cancer, and nobody mentioned it afterward. “She told them and that was it,” she says. ‘There wasn’t a flood of phone calls or letters. They were just, like, ‘Okay, we get it.’ I think Susan [Olsen] and I may have emailed, but that was about it. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, sh**, here we go,’ but it just coasted through.”

That balance—between shared history and individual lives—is something Plumb has maintained carefully over the years. It’s also reflected in the way she approached writing her memoir, choosing not to lean into the kind of sensationalism that often defines celebrity books. “People always want secrets,” she says. “And I didn’t get a big publisher because I wasn’t throwing anybody under the bus.”