Danny Bonaduce has long admitted he wasn’t always the easiest kid to work with as a child actor on the 1970s sitcomThe Partridge Family. But there was a time when he pushed one of his co-stars too far.
During a May 2025 appearance on the Pop Culture Retro podcast, Bonaduce, 66, recalled a moment when he was being such a brat on set that his TV sister, Susan Dey, took action.
“I was a kid, man,” Bonaduce shared. “I was a kid. Things were going my way. I was a kid, I got seven dollars a week allowance, and I had a minibike. Things were going my way. And apparently I was acting like a d--- and was kind of unaware of it. There's a scene, you won't see it on TV ...I'm trying to do my line over the breakfast table, and Susan Dey dumps a gallon of milk on my head in the middle of the scene. I stop for a second, and I'm about to be flipped out furious. And I realize, ‘Oh, this is endearing, she likes me.'"
That wasn't the case. It turns out that the rest of The Partridge Family cast was in on the prank. In her book Shirley Jones: A Memoir, Partridge Family matriarch Shirley Jones revealed that the rest of the cast put Dey up to the trick. “Once, when [Bonaduce] was getting too big for his boots, we all ganged up on him and convinced Susan to pour a pitcher of milk over his head, just to put him in his place,” Jones wrote in her 2013 tell-all.
In an interview with the C’mon Get Happy blog, Bonaduce acknowledged that Dey’s milk moment was completely ad-libbed. "It wasn’t cut, it wasn’t part of any episode,” he said. “I think I was screwing up my lines a lot and being an a--. The fact of the matter is that I was an extraordinarily ill-mannered young man, and she just got tired of it."
RELATED: Danny Bonaduce Shares Details of On Set Clash That Got ‘Partridge Family’ Star Fired
But there was more to come. On the new podcast, Bonaduce noted that he had already been called out about his behavior more than once before Dey dumped the milk on his head.
“I thought it was some kind of bit, but they put me in my chair, it said my name on it and all that cool stuff,” he recalled. “And then people from out of nowhere started running in with duct tape and rope, and they tied me to that chair. Now dig this, because I can't see how this is even legal. So they tie me in the chair. Then [Director of Photography] Fred Jackman hoists it into the air. Maybe 10 feet in the air. All weird, all fun and games. And then they left, and this is how I remember they all went to lunch and came back. ...I think they were startled to see me still there, like I should have gotten out of this or something. I'm 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old, and I'm floating in the air on a Danny Partridge chair. I didn't get out.”
Bonaduce previously looked back on his bad behavior in an interview with Classic Bands, where he revealed that Jones would sometimes reprimand him on set.
“I would be doing something that she would find inappropriate, and she'd go ‘Danny, you go to your room right now!’ And I was like, "Shirley, I don't really have a room here,’” The Partridge Family alum said.
Related: ‘Partridge Family’ Star Danny Bonaduce Gives Rare Update on Susan Dey and Shirley Jones
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