The Brady Bunch star Susan Olsen revealed that she nearly died at age 7 after being injured filming the pilot episode of the classic sitcom in 1969.
“My eyes were completely bruised. I had two blackened eyes. My nose was swollen. The entirety of my face was swollen,” Olsen, who is 63 years old, shared during an episode of the “Real Brady Bros” podcast on Tuesday, April 23.
Olsen joined his onscreen brothers Barry Williams (Greg Brady), Christopher Knight (Peter Brady), and Mike Lookinland (Bobby Brady) to revisit the 1969 pilot episode of The Brady Bunch, where Mike (Robert Reed) and Carol (Florence Henderson) tie the knot.
The actress explained that she was severely injured while having her makeup put on one day before filming.
“While on the Culver lot, they were filming a scene — most likely in the girls’ bedroom — and I was in the process of having body makeup applied to my legs,” Olsen recounted. “I was standing on a makeup chair when something from the catwalk, where they store all the lights and equipment, suddenly dropped.”
She went on: “[The debris] hit the makeup man first, [then] off the body makeup woman, and hit me in the face.”
The onset accident left Olsen with severe facial swelling, which she noted was visible in “some of the early publicity shots.” Olsen said that her family chose not to take legal action against the studio so as not to risk her job on The Brady Bunch.
“The saddest news is that we didn’t sue Paramount, because I would have made more off of that than the show,” Olsen quipped “But I came to work the next day. Florence was the first one to see me. She’s like, ‘You make sure everybody sees her.’ And my mom was like, ‘Oh, yes, I will.’ Because everybody was trying to say, ‘It didn’t really hit her. She’s fine.’”
Despite the physical pain, Olsen acknowledged “loving” the attention that came with the Brady Bunch cast and crew seeing how badly she’d been injured.
“I looked like I was in a horror film. And then everybody knew, yes, I had gotten hurt, and I had gotten hurt very badly,” she said.
In order to get Olsen camera-ready for Mike and Carol’s nuptials, The Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz employed legendary makeup artist Hal King — who’d worked with Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show — to cover up the young actress’s injuries.
“He was the specialist to cover up my black eyes. I loved Lucy. She was my idol,” Olsen said. “I was so thrilled to have him. And every day, my bruises would be a different color, and I’d say, ‘My bruises are purple today, Hal.’”
The anecdote surprised Olsen’s Brady Bunch costars, with Knight admitting he’d never known “anything” about his onscreen sibling’s injuries.
The very first Brady Bunch episode, which aired on September 26, 1969, revolved around Mike and Carol’s backyard wedding — though it did not take place in the house many are familiar with from the classic series. There was a brief mention that the Bradys’ dream home as a blended family was being built at the time.
Typical light-hearted Brady Bunch chaos ensued during the nuptials as the Brady boys’ dog, Tiger, chased the girls’ cat, Fluffy, around the backyard. In the end, Mike and Carol exchanged vows and surprised their kids by deciding to take all six children — as well as housekeeper Alice (Ann B. Davis) and their pets — along on their honeymoon.
The Brady Bunch originally aired for five seasons on ABC, between 1969 and 1974. Numerous spin-offs followed throughout the 1970s and 1980s as well as three satirical feature films released in the 1990s.
