'Brady Bunch' actor Robert Reed was often drunk and had angry outbursts on sets that would halt filming for days, reveals new book
The 'Brady Bunch' brought to our homes the vision of the perfect, loving American family but, it turns out, the show's prime patriarch Mike Brady, played by actor Robert Reed, made the experience quite the opposite for others who were working with him.
It has now been revealed that Reed would often be drunk during the filming of the show and would often have angry outbursts. The actor is believed to have taken up the role purely for the money and would just be difficult to work with. He would throw tantrums, demand his lines be rewritten if he didn't like them, and so on, according to the new book 'The Way We All Became the Brady Bunch: How the Canceled Sitcom Became the Beloved Pop Culture Icon We Are Still Talking About Today' by author Kimberly Potts.
Episodes like the one where the 'Brady' mom Carol and the family's housekeeper Alice get into a competition over who can make the tastiest strawberry jams are among the many where Reed acted super difficult to work with.
The script reportedly had his character, Mike, walk into the house and exclaim that the house smelled like 'strawberry heaven.' However, Reed went on to fact-check the statement and refused to use the "strawberry heaven" line as he had discovered that strawberries have no scent while being cooked.
This led to a standoff between him and Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz, as Reed refused to say the line and Schwartz had to bring him on set to show that the cooked strawberries did, in fact, have a scent.
Reed's, with his adamant nature, finally overcame Schwartz who told the actor that he could instead say it 'looks', instead of 'smells', like strawberry heaven.
In another instance, when Alice’s uniform had ink splattered all over it, Reed was less than impressed and ended up penning a raging multi-page memo to the show’s executives. Criticizing the prop department, he called the entire scene so 'unfunny that even a laugh machine would balk' at it.
The author says Reed was far from professional on the sets of the show that changed everything for him as he would spend whole lunch breaks drinking and come back drunk for filming—which would often lead to Schwartz having to cancel filming for the day.
Many were also shocked to find out, only after the actor's death at the age of 59, that he was gay.
Reed died from health complications stemming from his HIV positive status. His sexuality was a secret he had closely guarded throughout his career.
Reed, however, was very protective of his TV children, the book reveals.
"He took his responsibility as the TV dad seriously. He famously took the kids on a trip to England because he wanted to expose them to culture and Shakespeare," reads an excerpt in the book. "He also famously gave them Super 8 cameras for Christmas. He wanted to help them the same as a father would."
For the rest of the crew, it looks like Reed's feelings were less than warm as he famously fell out with show executives once and did not appear for several episodes at a stretch, including the 1974 series finale, all because he had objections with parts of the script.
The book says Schwartz was even supposed to write Mike Brady's character out, owing to all this drama, so the 'Brady' kids could find love for Carol once again on the show.
