Susan Olsen Hated Her Famous ‘Brady Bunch’ Role: “I Did Not Like Cindy. I Did Not Like the Character”

THE BRADY BUNCH, Susan Olsen, 1969-1974. — Everett Collection

When Susan Olsen recently appeared alongside her The Brady Bunch siblings Christopher Knight, Mike Lookinland and Barry Williams at The Chocolate Expo at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, the group mostly looked back at fun memories of the show. But working on the series wasn’t all sunshine days: Olsen admitted that playing Cindy Brady wasn’t always easy for her. In fact, she often hated playing the role, because she wasn’t anything like the character she portrayed.

She admitted at the panel, “This is not a popular thing to say, and I’m going to push it, but I did not like Cindy. I did not like the character. I thought she was an idiot. I thought she was a tattletale, which is like so uncool I wanted people to know that I wasn’t her friend but I wasn’t the opposite of her either. The problem, for me, was I didn’t go to school [because of filming]. We were all going to public school when we weren’t working. I would get teased a lot because of the dumb stuff Cindy did while she was in my body, things that I would never do.”

THE BRADY BUNCH, Susan Olsen, 'Eenie, Meenie, Mommy, Daddy,' (Season 1, aired October 10, 1969), 1969-1974

Everett Collection

The 63-year-old also shared stories of how playing the part ruined her hair. Olsen, who was only eight when she joined the cast, had to dye her hair blonde every three weeks to fit in the family. Olsen said that her mother would eventually put rollers in her hair every night so she could wake up and film in those adorable ringlets.

Everett Collection; Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

She explained, “Every three weeks they had to dye my hair. If you look at the third season, my hair is kind of a different shade of blonde every episode. They were trying out different things, but then my hair had started to fall out. With that, I went back to letting my mom do my hair, every Friday night.”

While Olsen didn’t exactly enjoy her time acting as Cindy, she did enjoy the camaraderie on set between the cast members. She believes that the reason the show translated so well to audiences is because the cast had genuine love for each other and the kids truly did want to please their onscreen parents.