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Eve Plumb says America’s favorite TV family wasn’t cashing in behind the scenes.
Despite “The Brady Bunch” becoming a widely popular sitcom after its 1969 to 1974 run, Plumb revealed the cast saw little financial reward from the endless reruns that turned the show into a pop-culture institution.
“A lot of times when you’re an actor, you can see that people are looking at you like you have it all, and you have all the money in the world… I just wanted to set it straight that that’s not necessarily true. That the pay rate was different… the residuals were different and also actors are continually having to fight to be paid, in any way,” Plumb exclusively told Fox News Digital.
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“The Brady Bunch” cast, including Christopher Knight, Barry Williams, Ann B. Davis, Eve Plumb, Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, Maureen McCormick, Susan Olsen, and Mike Lookinland. (ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images; CBS via Getty Images)
“And there’s some sort of idea that we… should do this for free because it’s fun. It’s work… we’re trained, and we spend a lot of time and money to do the work well. So, we should be paid.”
The actress, best known for playing Jan Brady, debunked one of Hollywood’s biggest myths in her memoir, “Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond” — that classic TV stars automatically became rich from reruns.
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“People often think that the six Brady kids now coast through life on our residuals from the hundreds of thousands of times the five seasons of ‘The Brady Bunch’ have been in reruns since 1974,” Plumb wrote in her book, out now. “If only it were so.”
“The Brady Bunch” cast members Susan Olsen, Mike Lookinland, Eve Plumb, Christopher Knight, Maureen McCormick, Barry Williams, Ann B. Davis, Florence Henderson and Robert Reed pose on the stairs in Los Angeles in 1969. (CBS via Getty Images)
“The reality is that we each had a contract that would pay us residuals for the first 10 reruns of each episode only,” she continued. “Obviously, it was never expected that the show would rerun more than three, maybe four, times. Needless to say, that faucet of residuals income ran dry before I even graduated from high school.”
Plumb said the money stopped almost as quickly as the cameras did.
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“If I had a dime for every rerun episode, I’d pay off the national deficit,” she quipped in the memoir’s introduction before delivering the punchline: “I don’t.”
“Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond” by Eve Plumb and Marcia Wilkie is available now. (Kensington / Citadel Press)
She later doubled down in an interview with “PauseRewind,” saying, “We don’t make residuals.”
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Former co-star Barry Williams has backed up Plumb’s claims for years.
“The Brady Bunch” cast members Susan Olsen, Barry Williams, Eve Plumb, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, and Mike Lookinland appear in a scene from the television series on Sept. 1, 1971. (ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)
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In his 1992 memoir, “Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg,” Williams revealed just how modest the cast’s paychecks really were during the show’s peak.
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“Salaries for sitcom actors have changed considerably since the ’70s,” Williams wrote, according to Page Six. “In our fifth and final year, the highest salary among us kids was $1,100 a week.”
The top-paid Brady kid earned just over $24,000 for the final 22-episode season — before taxes, agent fees and helping support family members.
“It was enough to indulge in toys, but hardly enough to carry you through the slow periods that inevitably followed,” Williams wrote.
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He also confirmed the cast’s rerun income evaporated fast.
“Payments for subsequent airings of the show dried up shortly after we finished filming,” Williams wrote.
“Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond” is available now.