Barry Williams admitted that the addition of a new character on the final season of The Brady Bunch didn’t work—but he blamed it more on the writing than the child actor himself. During a May 2026 appearance on The Magnificent Others podcast, Williams, 71, noted that the addition of Cousin Oliver (played by Robbie Rist) on the fifth season of the ABCsitcom could be compared to Happy Days’ Fonzie, when Henry Winkler put on skis and jumped over a shark.
“He jumped shark and then the show went off the air,” Williams said. “And Robbie did six shows and the show went off the air.”
Williams clarified that he is actually a fan of Rist, who was just nine years old when he appeared on The Brady Bunch. “Robbie Rist, I consider a friend of mine,” Williams told podcast host Billy Corgan. “I like him. I think he was hysterical on the show. He did a great job. He's a good actor. He's a good musician, and he's very active and busy. He was completely wrong for our show."
“It was a kind of a stunt,” Williams acknowledged of Rist’s casting. “And what that was, is in simple terms, I think the writers had run out of ideas. Or they weren't going to let the kids grow up. … I should have been going off to college. But we were all grown up. So they brought in somebody young to tag along with Cindy and with Bobby (Susan Olsen, Mike Lookinland). But the humor and the way they wrote for them was not Brady-like at all. I mean, they're giving him da da da. They're giving him, you know, one, two, three punchlines. It didn't fit in at all. It was not well received, and he kind of had to suffer that. But good guy.”
Many Brady Bunch fans have blamed the addition of Rist’s character for the demise of the popular sitcom, which ended its five-season run in March 1974.
According to People, at a 2025 fan convention at The Chocolate Expo at Hofstra University, Williams admitted he already had one foot out the door when Rist was added to the cast. “I was looking for the exit when we saw Oliver walking through the front door,” the actor shared.
RELATED: ‘Brady Bunch’ Star Says His Own Mom Hated the Show
Rist, now 61, reflected on becoming one of TV’s most hated characters in a 2023 interview with Cracked. The actor and musician noted that he already had a "ton” of experience when he was cast on the ABC series.
“I’d worked with Jonathan Winters, John Denver, andJodie Foster, and I’d been in over 200 commercials; so The Brady Bunch was just another job for me," he shared. “I did it for six weeks. When the season ended, everyone was like, ‘See you next year.’”
“For the people who say I killed the show, well, Oliver killing The Brady Bunch is as ridiculous as Yoko killing the Beatles,” Rist added. “But the truth of it doesn’t matter to some people — it’s ‘print the legend.’ If you really think that a 9-year-old child had the capability to bring down a popular American television show, then I say, ‘Believe that and enjoy.’”
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