'Brady Bunch' Star Robert Reed's Private Pain & Famous OnSet Battles Revealed Andrea ReiherOctober 21, 2025 at 2:24 AM 0 ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images A new episode of TV We Love shines a light on The Brady Bunch patriarch Robert Reed — his perfectionis...
- - 'Brady Bunch' Star Robert Reed's Private Pain & Famous On-Set Battles Revealed
Andrea ReiherOctober 21, 2025 at 2:24 AM
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ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
A new episode of TV We Love shines a light on The Brady Bunch patriarch Robert Reed — his perfectionism, his private struggles, and his complicated relationship with series creator Sherwood Schwartz.
Reed, who died in 1992 at just 59, played the quintessential TV dad, Mike Brady. But behind the scenes, the classically trained actor wrestled with both personal pain and professional frustration that often spilled onto the set.
'He Fought With My Dad for Six Years'
In the TV We Love episode, Sherwood Schwartz's daughter Hope Juber recalls that while Gene Hackman was once considered for the role of Mike Brady, the network ultimately wanted Reed — who had just come off hit legal TV drama The Defenders — because he already had a studio deal.
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Her older brother Lloyd Schwartz, who was a producer on the show, remembers watching the screen tests and finding Reed "a little stiff," noting that "the casting for Robert Reed was easier for the studio because the studio had a deal with him."
But once filming began, tensions surfaced almost immediately.
"He fought with my dad about every little detail," Hope says. "He was very picky and very insistent that if it didn't match what he felt was logical, he was going to make a scene about it."
Barry Williams, who played eldest son Greg Brady, adds that Reed "tried to get fired several times in the first year."
While Reed stuck it out for five seasons, he eventually did kind of get fired. What turned out to be the Brady Bunch's last episode had a storyline about hair tonic turning Greg's hair orange and it was a bridge too far for Reed. He wrote a scathing letter to Sherwood about how he wouldn't play that storyline, so Sherwood rewrote the episode and removed Reed from it entirely. And that ended up being the series finale.
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Had the show returned for a sixth season, Reed was most likely going to be recast. But the show was cancelled before the producers had to deal with that.
However, after the show ended, it became super popular in syndication, so the network brought back the cast for The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, Reed included. Eve Plumb (Jan Brady) was actually the only main cast member who declined to participate in the variety show, which ran for nine episodes scheduled sporadically throughout the 1976-1977 television season. The full cast, with Plumb, reunited one final time for the short-lived series The Brady Brides in 1981 and then almost everyone came back together for A Very Brady Christmas, a TV movie from December 1988. Susan Olsen was unable to participate in that, so Jennifer Runyon played Cindy Brady.
Then again, almost everyone reunited for the short-lived revival series The Bradys; Maureen McCormick (Marcia) was unable to participate in that one. The Bradys was one of the last things Reed filmed before his death in 1992.
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A Perfectionist Caught Between Two Worlds
Florence Henderson, who played matriarch Carol Brady, explains that Reed's dedication to realism often clashed with the show's sunny tone.
"I would have to go every so often, 'This is comedy, Bob, not Shakespeare. It's a situation comedy for television.'" Henderson says in archival footage (Henderson died in 2016).
Lloyd Schwartz puts it more bluntly: "Robert Reed was a stickler for accuracy, which sometimes gets in the way of comedy."
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Actor Gary Cole, who later portrayed Mike Brady in the 1990s Brady Bunch movies, sympathized with Reed's dilemma.
"He was a New York-trained actor, a wonderful, classical actor, had done a lot of theater. So this was somebody who had done serious work," says Cole. "I can see both sides of it because, you know, when you go into a show, you don't know that it's going to become iconic. All you know is this is the job you have.."
The Father of America Who Couldn't Come Out
Schwartz himself — seen in archival footage because he died in 2011 — acknowledges the pressure Reed faced as a closeted gay man during the early 1970s.
"I sympathized with him because here he is, the father of America, and he can't come out of the closet," Schwartz says in the episode.
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Henderson echoes that compassion, saying, "He was a very proud man, a wonderful actor and a wonderful human being who happened to be gay. None of us ever cared — it wasn't important."
TV critic Jim Colucci adds that Reed lived with a "growing dissonance between the actor and the character that makes it tough," noting that "he was playing this more-wholesome-than-wholesome guy in an era where being gay was considered a shameful secret."
Though The Brady Bunch was lighthearted and family-friendly, Reed's intensity gave Mike Brady a grounding realism that helped the show endure for generations.
As Gary Cole reflects, "It's not a silly show, really. There are silly moments in it, but there are real family connections, which he took seriously."
TV We Love airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
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