The Brady Bunch actor Eve Plumb has said she and her co-stars do not receive residuals from reruns of the beloved sitcom.
Plumb, 68, was just 11 when she was cast as Jan Brady, the middle daughter in the series, which ran for five seasons between 1969 and 1974. The series followed a blended family with six children headed by widower Mike Brady (Robert Reed) and Carol Brady (Florence Henderson).
Despite the show ending more than 50 years ago, episodes have remained in near-constant syndication, with reruns typically airing on cable networks MeTV and Catchy Comedy.
Still, the cast does not make residuals, Plumb revealed in her newly released memoir, Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond.
“If I had a dime for every rerun episode, I’d pay off the national deficit,” she wrote, per PageSix. “I don’t.”
Residuals are long-term payments to those who worked on films and television shows, negotiated by unions, for reruns and other airings after the project’s initial release.
Plumb’s castmate Barry Williams, 72, who played the eldest Brady son, Greg, similarly shared details about their salaries in his 1992 memoir, Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg.
“Salaries for sitcom actors have changed considerably since the ‘70s,” he penned. “In our fifth and final year, the highest salary among us kids was $1,100 a week.”
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Williams calculated that making $1,100 a week during the final 22-episode season would have amounted to around $24,000. Acknowledging that the income was “not bad for a teenager,” he noted an important caveat.
“Take into consideration agent commissions, taxes and the fact that some of the kids were expected to contribute to their families,” he explained. “It was enough to indulge in toys, but hardly enough to carry you through the slow periods that inevitably followed.”
The other young stars of the show included Maureen McCormick (Marcia), 69; Mike Lookinland (Bobby), 65; Christopher Knight (Peter), 68; and Susan Olsen (Cindy), 64.
Olson also addressed the lack of residuals on a 2013 episode of the documentary-style Where Are They Now series, sharing that actors were only “paid for reruns for the first 10 runs.” She noted that the final checks they received were in 1979. “We made no money since then,” she said.
Residuals have been a hot-button topic in the industry in recent years following the rise of streaming services that have acquired network shows, causing residual payments to shrink considerably.
“The residual issue is a huge issue,” Mandy Moore told The Hollywood Reporter in 2023. “We’re in incredibly fortunate positions as working actors having been on shows that found tremendous success in one way or another… but many actors in our position for years before us were able to live off of residuals or at least pay their bills.”
