Brady Bunch star Barry Williams had no idea his show was ending when ABC pulled the plug on it in 1974. The beloved sitcom aired for five seasons and was unexpectedly canceled during the summer hiatus.
On the second episode of the CW’s TV We Love, Williams, who played eldest son Greg Brady on the series, recalled getting a phone call over the break. “It was out of the blue,” Williams said. “And it was from a network executive who said he was there with a bottle of scotch and wanted to let me know that our show had been canceled.”
“I was completely blindsided by it,” Williams, 71, admitted. “I drove over to Paramount studio and went straight over to my parking spot. And the name plate had been painted over. My name was no longer there. It was somebody else’s. That was when it hit me. And nobody said goodbye. And I took it personally.”
The Brady Bunch cast didn’t get the chance to film a traditional season finale. In fact, series star Robert Reed didn’t even appear in what would be the final episode, "The Hair-brained Scheme,” which aired on March 8, 1974.
Reed, who played family patriarch Mike Brady, took issue with the plot in which Greg’s hair turned bright orange after he used hair tonic his brother Bobby (Mike Lookinland) was selling. Reed wrote a manifesto to showrunner Sherwood Schwartz stating his refusal to appear in the episode, so he was written out of it. In one scene, Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) notes that Mike missed Greg’s high school graduation because he was out of town. Hardly a fitting end to what was one of the most beloved television shows of the 1970s.
On TV We Love, it was confirmed that the producers never expected "The Hair-Brained Scheme" to be the final Brady Bunch episode and were truly caught off guard by the show's cancellation. Producer Lloyd Schwartz recalled that he was at a banquet when the vice president of Paramount said to him, “Well, we fought the good fight.”
“And that’s how we found out it was over,” he revealed.
Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight (Peter Brady) described the situation as "inglorious.” “It’s not like a party, it’s not like there’s an ending,” he said. “All of a sudden you break, you’re on hiatus, and you’re never coming back.”
Barry Williams Thought Greg Brady Would Be Shown in College for Season 6
Before the bad news dropped, Williams had high hopes for his future as Greg Brady. In an interview with Closer Weekly, he said the cast had been told there would be a Season 6 for The Brady Bunch.
“I thought Greg was going to go to college,” the actor admitted. “I was looking forward to getting out of the house and maybe moving into my own show and things like that, because I had those kinds of ambitions. And we had been promised that it would go another year. And then they pulled the plug.”
Williams was able to reprise his role on a Brady Bunch variety show, two spin-offs, and a highly rated 1988 Christmas movie.
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