“The Brady Bunch” was one of the shows that defined the 1970s, thanks in part to Robert Reed’s steady presence as family patriarch Mike Brady. He and Carol (Florence Henderson) rank as one of the greatest TV couples ever, although creative differences between Reed and creator Sherwood Schwartz kept Reed off camera for the series finale. Reed is credited with appearances on all 117 episodes of the show, although he doesn’t actually appear in Season 5, Episode 22, “The Hair-Brained Scheme.” He actually walked off the show between being handed the script and production week in protest of a plot point.
Reed had studied Shakespeare at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before moving to television, and didn’t expect “The Brady Bunch” to rely so heavily on silly humor and outrageous circumstances. He would often push back against plot developments he felt didn’t make sense, according to Schwartz’s daughter. In an interview for “TV We Love,” writer and actor Hope Juber said Reed “fought with my dad about every little detail. 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” (via Parade). Reed objected to the main thread in the finale where a homemade hair dye turns the curly locks of Greg (Barry Williams) bright orange, and wrote Schwartz a letter of protest after seeing the script.
With the show’s renewal for Season 6 still in question, Schwartz decided that cutting Reed’s lines was his path of least resistance. He wrote Mike out of the episode, but Reed still showed up on set to complain. Mike’s absence from Greg’s graduation was dismissed with a single line from previously widowed or divorced Carol, and she was left to deal with Greg’s hair without her TV husband.
Sherwood Schwartz wanted a different actor to play Mike Brady
Barry Williams explained what happened in his 2000 autobiography “Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg.” In 2023, MeTV published an excerpt that read, “We Bradys limped through our final episodes with a plot Robert Reed found so unbelievable and stupid that he flatly refused to appear in it.” Sherwood Schwartz says his professional relationship with Reed was doomed from the start, although he points the finger of blame directly at his star.
“[Reed] never should have been on the show to begin with,” Schwartz said in a 2003 interview with Retrocrush. “He was spoiled because he was in a Shakespeare company in England, and he felt he was above TV in general, officially sitcoms … I wanted Gene Hackman for that role, a year before ‘The French Connection’ … But Paramount had a deal with Robert Reed.” For her part, Florence Henderson says she respected Reed’s process and worked well with him.
In an interview published by MeTV in 2023, Henderson said, “I don’t think he ever did things with great malice. I just think that was Bob’s way of doing things, and I accepted him that way.” When “The Brady Bunch” wrapped for good in 1974, Reed was free to take on more serious television projects. He earned three Emmy nominations in ’76 and ’77 for “Rich Man, Poor Man,” “Medical Center,” and “Roots.”
