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Kaley Cuoco has been acting since childhood and earned a reputation as a modern comedy queen thanks to her 12-year run as Penny on "The Big Bang Theory" and her Emmy-nominated performance in the dark comedy "The Flight Attendant" from 2020 to 2022. Her star started rising way back in 2002, when she played the eldest daughter in the Hennessy family, Bridget, on the hit ABC sitcom "8 Simple Rules."
But the "Meet Cute" star was on many prominent shows in the '90s before landing her breakout role. One of her first TV roles was as a young Angela Chase (aka young Claire Danes) on the cult-favorite teen romance series "My So-Called Life." Not long after that, she played young Ellen on Ellen DeGeneres' groundbreaking '90s sitcom, "The Ellen Show." So Cuoco had plenty of practice playing young versions of fictional characters. Perhaps that's what made casting directors think she was the perfect fit for one of her lesser-known roles.
Cuoco played young "Brady Bunch" star Maureen McCormick (aka Marcia Brady) in the 2000 TV movie "Growing Up Brady," which was based on Barry Williams' (aka Greg Brady) 1992 memoir, "Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg." Both the book and film told stories about the young actors' coming-of-age moments in the '70s while filming the show that would become one of the most iconic sitcoms in TV history.
Kaley Cuoco and Adam Brody acted out a real-life Brady Bunch romance
Paramount Television
"Growing Up Brady" aired on NBC and featured the behind-the-scenes romance that sparked between Maureen McCormick and Barry Williams (played by Adam Brody) while they played stepbrother and stepsister on screen on "The Brady Bunch." According to lore, the young actors shared their first kiss in a limo after they saw The Who's rock opera, "Tommy." Per the film, Williams also had a crush on Florence Henderson, and McCormick flirted with Davey Jones on set, causing some jealous tension between them. It culminated in another incident that became a part of the behind-the-scenes history among the cast. The pair were filming a scene in which Marcia and Greg were meant to share a chaste kiss between siblings, but it kept getting steamy.
Off camera, history didn't repeat itself. Cuoco was 14 while filming "Growing Up Brady," and Adam Brody celebrated his 20th birthday on set. "Because Kaley Cuoco was so young, I didn't really make any appropriate friends to keep," Brody recalled for The Independent in 2023. But he called playing Williams the "biggest step up" in his career.
Cuoco had fond memories of the job in a 2015 interview with E! News, saying that when she got the audition, she thought, "Oh yeah, Marcia Brady. This'll never happen." But when it did, she had "so much fun" in the role.
As for what the real Marcia thought about Cuoco's performance, McCormick once told the Maureen McCormick Fan Club, "I thought she was wonderful," while admitting it was odd seeing someone acting as her.
