Danny Bonaduce is opening up about his dynamic with his Partridge Family castmate, Dave Madden.
In a September 2025 interview on That's Classic!, Bonaduce, who played the middle Partridge child, Danny, recalled spending time with Madden outside of filming. As fans are aware, Madden played the musical Partridge family's manager, Reuben Kincaid.
During the interview, Bonaduce, who was 10 when he was cast as Danny, noted that he lived with Madden and his on-screen mother, Shirley Jones, because of his unstable family life during the show's 4-season run, which ended in 1974.
According to Bonaduce, Madden "taught [him] how to drive," specifically stick shift, and "unfortunately, he taught [him] how to smoke." Bonaduce clarified that he would take Madden's cigarettes from his dressing room.
"I think about it now as odd, but at the time I could go when he was shooting, I could go into his dressing room and he'd leave cigarettes out and I would smoke them. And he would act like he didn't know. But why was he leaving the cigarettes out?" said Bonaduce in the interview. "I mean it's in the best way but what the hell was he thinking? I mean it's insane."
He then shared an incident when Madden decided to let him drive his car in Topanga Canyon while he was staying with him in Malibu, California.
"I would sit on his lap and he would do the gears and make sure everything was okay. But this time we're at the top of Topanga Canyon, which is an extra 11 miles downhill with tricky turns on a cliff on one side," recalled the 66-year-old.
He said, however, that he became alarmed when Madden decided to pull a prank on him.
"He said, 'You're doing really good, son.' Then he grabbed his chest and went and keeled over like he was dead of a heart attack," said Bonaduce in the That's Classic! interview.
He said he "didn't immediately buy it until the car started going so fast."
"As we got down 11 straight miles at way too fast, he kindly sat up and went, 'Oh, oh, oh.' And then like stopped at the red light," said Bonaduce.
Danny Bonaduce Spoke About Living With Dave Madden
While filming the That's Classic! interview, Bonaduce spoke about spending his summers "at [Madden's] house." He said the actor, who died in 2014 at the age of 82, was "very much like a dad to [him]."
"I'd stay with Dave and it was wonderful. Just a great guy," said Bonaduce in the interview.
He also said his castmates knew his father, television producer Joseph Bonaduce, had a "violent temper" and was physically abusive.
"That's one of the reasons that Dave Madden took me to his home out in the kindness of his heart looking out for me," said Bonaduce.
He also said that Jones, his on-screen older sister, Susan Day, and David Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge, would take "turns taking [him] home for the weekend" during the production of the hit series.
In an October 2018 interview with Pop Goes The Culture, Jones, now 91, spoke about Madden and Bonaduce's dynamic. She said their character's comedic moments together "made the humor in the show."
She also said that Madden, who had two children of his own, was "a second father to Danny." In addition, Jones also complimented Bonaduce's abilities as a young actor.
"Danny was one of the most brilliant child actors I've ever worked with," said Jones in the 2018 interview.
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