Christopher Knight ‘took offense’ to how ‘The Brady Bunch’ treated step-siblings: They ‘really failed us’

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“The Brady Bunch” star Christopher Knight revealed that he has a bone to pick with the show. 

During a recent episode of “The Real Brady Bros” podcast, which Knight, 67, co-hosts with Barry Williams, 70,  they were joined by Susan Olsen, 63, who played Cindy Brady, and Mike Lookinland, 64, who played Bobby Brady. 

“I took offense to it,” Knight said, referring to the other actors pointing out how the show didn’t distinguish between step-siblings and blood-related siblings. 

He added, “I thought that was the part of the show that really failed us as kids. And I was just 12 years old, thinking at that time, ‘They’re not really my sisters.’ And I know growing up, I would have said, ‘You’re not really my sister.’”

The hit sitcom, which originally aired from 1969 to 1974, followed a blended family, as Mike Brady (Robert Reed), a widower with three sons (played by Knight, Williams, and Lookinland), married Carol Martin (Florence Henderson), who had daughters Marcia (Maureen McCormick), Jan (Eve Plumb) and Cindy (Olsen). 

During the podcast, Williams pointed out that in the show, “We don’t ever refer to ourselves as stepbrother, stepsister, or stepmom.” 

Olsen said that the writers eventually “forgot” they weren’t siblings by blood. 

“They had Jan say to Peter, ‘You’re my brother, blood is thicker than water,’” she recalled. “And Eve and Chris went to the producers and said, ‘We’re not related.’” But the producers said “nobody” remembered that, she added. 

Knight said that as he reflects on the show as an adult and looks back on its “undoubtable” success, “I recognize that the reason in part for that success is because we didn’t do that. It was all about getting along.”

 If the Brady boys had a photo of their birth mom up, it would be “a potential wedge issue,” he added. 

He continued, “So it was completely put aside.”

Williams pointed out that the blending of families was series creator Sherwood Schwartz’s “whole idea” for “The Brady Bunch” because he had read news articles about “the number of families in the ’60s that the parents were getting divorced,” which led to the phenomenon of “latchkey kids” who were home without parents.