On HGTV’s 2019 series A Very Brady Renovation, the Studio City mid-century ranch home that served as the establishing shot of the Brady Bunch house was gutted and remodeled to look like the interiors from the beloved sitcom. Then in 2023, socialite (and super Brady fan) Tina Trahan bought the property for $3.2 million and has been obsessively filling it with every prop and decorative item ever captured on the series — 300 “easter eggs” in all. I toured the house and can attest it is one of the trippiest experiences I’ve ever encountered. Salt and pepper shakers, handwritten birthday cards, night table reading: it’s all exactly as it appeared on the show (as are the rooms).
Now Trahan is mulling what to do with her creation. She’s enlisted Brady Bunch cast members Barry “Greg” Williams and Christopher “Peter” Knight (himself in the decor space — his Christopher Knight Home collection chairs went viral when Oprah and Meghan Markle sat on them for their big interview) to help her drum up some ideas. People have been snapping photos outside the house since the ’70s — but now that the inside is as familiar and accurate as the outside, Trahan wants to allow fans to experience that, as well. The first event is a sweepstake called The Brady Experience that will result in five lucky winners being flown to L.A. to experience a day inside the house, including a meal of pork chops and applesauce with Knight et. al (proceeds going to charity).
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the affable Williams and Knight — whose The Real Brady Bros podcast relives every episode — to talk Brady Bunch auditions, Ann B. Davis’ comic timing and those pesky Hawaiian curses.
Hi, Barry and Christopher. It seems like a lot to carry with you your whole life — being the Bradys. What’s it like?
CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT It’s deep in the recess folds of their brains. They know us from somewhere.
BARRY WILLIAMS It’s like having friends everywhere you go, because people generally have a positive experience of having watched the show or being fans. And so when they’re putting that together with us, it turns on a heartlight, I guess you could say.
KNIGHT I feel like Santa Claus a lot. It’s like they’ve already virtually invited us into their families. And that’s how they treat us.
WILLIAMS It’s not really a burden, it’s just a different kind of experience.
Let’s go way back. Tell me about getting cast as Greg and Peter Brady.
WILLIAMS I had been working as an actor for about five years before the show. I’d done a lot of television shows: Dragnet, The Mod Squad, Marcus Welby, M.D. So I was not inexperienced. And this audition came up. The director of the Brady Bunch pilot had directed me in both That Girl and Gomer Pyle. And so I got into the loop with over 1,000 kids brought in to audition. I know I was anxious. I thought, “Boy, if I could have a series, then I wouldn’t have to go on a lot of auditions and I’d get to go to work every day.”
KNIGHT Barry had a consciousness of what that might be. I didn’t. I had been working for maybe two years doing mostly just commercials. I really only had three speaking roles prior to landing the pilot. I had no idea really what a series meant, nor did I spend any time really thinking about it. I was a kid with parents who thought that a child might help serve themselves. It’s very old school: All kids work and help support the family. I was told that I was to go on [auditions] by my dad.
Christopher, you were from New York?
KNIGHT I was born on the Upper East Side. But we moved out to Hollywood when I was two, because my dad was an actor. This is how he phrased it: “There’s this new business in Hollywood that a struggling stage actor might be able to make some money at.” And this other work was in this industry called television. We drove cross country in ’59 to do Thanksgiving with my dad’s family for a week and go back. We never came back. Every one of us in the family ended up with an agent as a child. Some didn’t have any success and some had limited success. And I got very lucky.
And Brady Bunch creator Sherwood Schwartz, we all know his name, but who was this guy?
WILLIAMS We’ve learned quite a bit about who he was doing our podcast and his intentions and then how it was reflected in our show.
KNIGHT And in his other series [like Gilligan’s Island]. He was about one thing and that was about disparate people getting along.
Was that related to his own background?
KNIGHT He was studying medicine. He wanted to be a doctor, and back then there was a limit on the number of Jewish applicants that were accepted. He was waiting for his application to come through. His brother was a writer for Bob Hope. And Sherwood helped him as a way of paying for his room and board. He was pretty good at it, and ultimately he never went into medicine. He just went on to write. He wrote for Red Skeleton and won Emmys.
WILLIAMS The Brady Bunch was ripped right out of the headlines. The latchkey child situation, of kids growing up in single-parent households.
KNIGHT And the divorce rate had reached more than 50 percent.
WILLIAMS But it hadn’t yet been accepted that people could be shown being divorced on television. And with the concept of marrying those two, he just thought that the episode ideas were limitless.
KNIGHT He wrote the pilot in ’65 and he took it around town and it didn’t get picked up. Then Yours, Mine and Ours came out in ’68 with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda [which features a similar concept to Brady Bunch], and became a hit. Paramount remembered that they had this script that had been pitched to them three years earlier. So they quickly recognized there might be something to that.
In terms of the Brady Bunch magic, there’s something unmatched about the chemistry of that cast. Was it real?
KNIGHT Yes. It was also about how Florence [Henderson] ultimately played the role of Carol, the way that Mike is played by Bob Reed. Then there was Ann B. Davis. Everybody at the network recognized there’s nobody in this series that’s got comic chops. That’s really what the role of Alice provides. She was the comedian. The situations were supposed to provide the rest of the comedy.
WILLIAMS I think you hit the nail on the head. It was a chemistry and that you cannot fake a chemistry. That is something that is there or it’s not. But we genuinely have it for real and still do, hence we’re here. And that I think translated through the screen. People got that and felt it.
The 10th Brady Bunch cast member — aside from Tiger — is the house. Now that it exists in the real world and three dimensions, what are the plans for it?
WILLIAMS This is really protecting the brand and protecting the legacy and doing something for the fans, as well. We’re sort of the genesis of it now because Tina has only recently become the owner. We’re collaborating with her to brainstorm ideas. We’ve already done fundraising for Marine Mammal Care Center and No Kid Hungry. There might be weddings there.
KNIGHT It’s been 40 years that people have been driving by this location and taking pictures of this house. They say it’s the second most photographed house in America, outside of the White House. We were actors [on a soundstage at Paramount Studios] and not really a family. I didn’t even think to ask the question of where the exterior shot house was located until 1994. But to America, that picture of the house is the Brady House. On HGTV, what we got to do is turn the inside into that, too. So now it really is the Brady House. But nobody gets to go in. They get to just drive by. Thanks to Tina, some people are going to have that opportunity.
Do you guys ever go to Hawaii? That episode about the cursed Tiki doll freaked out multiple generations of kids.
KNIGHT In fact, we got the honorary key to Honolulu because we helped kick off Hawaii as a practical destination. It was right after the Boeing 747 was introduced in ’69. We went in ’71 and it shows a large family going to Hawaii, which is depicted as affordable and practical. Until then, it was a really exotic destination.
WILLIAMS Hawaii is my favorite place in the world, and yes, I’ve continued to go there and continue to surf there. And we’re thrilled to do a TV show there. That was just too good. They declared an honorary Brady Bunch Day there.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
English (US) ·