Christine Taylor landed her dream role as Marcia Brady in “The Brady Bunch Movie” – but the part came with a catch.
The “Brady Bunch Movie” star recalled the uncomfortable demand she received after landing the role of Marcia Brady during the “Office Ladies” podcast, revealing she was “embarrassed” but agreed to do it because “that was just how things went” in Hollywood at the time.
Taylor landed the role of Marcia after starring in a live show called “The Real Live Brady Bunch.”
The actress had been obsessed with Marcia Brady for years and had seen “every single episode … backwards and forwards, inside out.”
“And then out-of-the-blue one day, I mean, out of the blue on my answering machine in 1990, whatever year this was, 92 or 93, I got a message from Sherwood Schwartz calling me, just cold calling me saying, ‘I would love to meet with you…'” she recalled.
For Taylor, getting a personal call from “The Brady Bunch” creator was the kind of Hollywood moment she never expected – and one she wished she had preserved.
“It was a pinch me moment that I cannot believe to this day that I still didn’t keep my little tape from the answering machine,” she added.
But beneath the disbelief, Taylor said she had no doubts about whether she was right for the role.
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“I knew it in my core that there was nobody who could do it better than me,” Taylor remembered.
That confidence appeared to carry her through the casting process, which Taylor remembered as surprisingly straightforward.
“I’m fairly sure that I met with them and that was pretty much it,” she recalled. “They didn’t tell me I got it, but I never had to go back in and audition solo again.”
Instead, Taylor read with different actors who would later portray her siblings – Jan and Cindy.
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But Taylor said the role also came with a request that reflected a much different era in Hollywood.“…It was a very different time in the industry,” Taylor explained of the 90s era. “The one thing that I got, and I was not a super heavy person, but they asked me to lose 10 pounds.”
Taylor emphasized that she wasn’t heavy at the time, but said dropping the weight felt like just another requirement of getting the job.
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“I was like, ‘I’ll lose 10 pounds,'” she admitted. “Of course I was embarrassed when that ask came my way because, by the way, it would never happen today. And also it just was like, I wasn’t the only person ever being asked to lose weight for a role back then. That was just how things went.”
“But I was like, ‘I’ll do it.’ And then the joke is over the course of the movie, which if you watch it very closely, I start to put the 10 pounds back on, and you can see it,” Taylor recalled. Like I’ll come into a scene looking a little rounder. And then like I exit the scene looking a little thinner just because of how they had to reshoot things.”
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Whatever pressure Taylor felt to shed weight didn’t stop her from enjoying herself once the cameras stopped rolling.
“But no, over the course of the movie, I really started to treat myself,” she explained. “Nonfat frozen yogurt was the big craze at the time. And that was my treat. I was like, ‘Oh, I wrapped. I’m going to meet my roommate. We’re going to go to the Big Chill and get a frozen yogurt with a huge thing of sprinkles on the side.'”
