‘Brady Bunch’ Star Susan Olsen Wishes She Sued Studio Over Backstage Injury: “I Would Have Made More Off of That Than the Show”

BRADY BUNCH, Eve Plumb, Susan Olsen, Maureen McCormick, Florence Henderson, Robert Reed, Barry Williams, Mike Lookinland, Christopher Knight, 'The Honeymoon', (Season 1), 1969-1974 — Everett Collection

During a recent episode of the podcast The Real Brady Bros., Mike Lookinland, Christopher Knight, Barry Williams and their youngest Brady sister Susan Olsen (Cindy Brady), joined together to rewatch the pilot episode “The Honeymoon.” While chatting, they started talking about the first day of filming and how things went very wrong, very quickly for Olsen, when the young actress got injured and, in her words, “almost died.”

Olsen explained during the episode, “On the Culver lot, they were shooting something — I would assume, in the girl’s bedroom — and I was getting body makeup on my legs. I was standing on a makeup chair and something from the catwalk, where they keep all the lights and everything, fell. It hit the makeup man first, [bounced] off the body makeup woman, and hit me in the face.”

THE BRADY BUNCH, Eve Plumb, Susan Olsen, Florence Henderson, Maureen McCormick in the debut episode, 'The Honeymoon', (Season 1, September 26, 1969), 1969-74

Everett Collection

She continued, “You can tell, if you look at the [wedding] ceremony, and you see the three girls on one side, if you were to zoom in really tight, you can see my face is quite swollen. I look different. You can even see it in some of the early publicity shots. You can tell my face is a little swollen.”

Olsen recalled that Florence Henderson, who starred as her TV mom Carol Brady, was the only one to comfort her as everyone else insisted that she was fine. She admitted that she was brave and held back tears but her mother took her to the doctor after the episode was filmed.

Everett Collection; Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

She added,”The saddest news is that we didn’t sue Paramount, because I would have made more off of that than the show. But I came to work the next day. Florence was the first one to see me. She’s like, ‘You make sure everybody sees her.’ And my mom was like, ‘Oh, yes, I will.’ Because everybody was trying to say, ‘It didn’t really hit her. She’s fine.’ My eyes were black. I mean, I had two black eyes. My nose was swollen. My face was swollen. I remember loving it, because I looked like I was in a horror film. And then everybody knew, yes, I had gotten hurt, and I had gotten hurt very badly.”