What Marcia Has Been Doing Since The Brady Bunch
Marcia Brady was one of the most iconic TV characters of the 1970s. The eldest of Mike and Carol Brady's golden-haired daughters on "The Brady Bunch" was played by Maureen McCormick, a longtime child star who had already appeared in commercials for Mattel and Kool-Aid. She logged guest spots on "My Three Sons" and "Bewitched" years before landing her life-changing role on the ABC sitcom, per IMDb.
Once she became "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," McCormick was portrayed as the all-American popular teen, with perfect hair and "problems" such as dates with two groovy guys on a Saturday night and getting Davy Jones to sing at her school's prom (Spoiler alert: She was successful in scoring the former Monkee).
While one can only imagine that Marcia married well and raised a perfect family that could solve all of their problems in 22 minutes, in real life, McCormick had some struggles. Yes, she did marry — the actress has been married to Michael Cummings since 1985 (per Showbiz Cheatsheet) and they share a now grown-up daughter, Natalie — but McCormick's personal story goes much deeper and darker.
Maureen McCormick continued as Marcia
"The Brady Bunch" was far from a one and done gig. The hit comedy series, which originally aired on ABC from 1969 to 1974, spawned a Saturday morning cartoon spinoff, as well as the short-lived "Brady Bunch Variety Hour," the TV movie "The Brady Girls Get married," and the spinoff series "The Brady Brides," per IMDb. The sitcom family hit pay dirt in 1981 with the hit TV movie, "A Very Brady Christmas." In addition, the original episodes of the sitcom never went away — they've been airing in syndication since the 1970s in an endless cycle.
The family came full circle 50 years after the "Brady Bunch" pilot with the 2019 HGTV show, 'A Very Brady Renovation," which had McCormick reuniting with her TV siblings: Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland, and Susan Olsen. They got together to renovate the house that was used for exterior shots on "The Brady Bunch." McCormick told Closer Weekly that reuniting with her TV siblings was "very surreal" and she likened it to an "out-of-body experience." The Emmy-nominated experience spawned another gig for her with the 2021 HGTV design show, "Frozen in Time," which features McCormick and designer Dan Vickery renovating outdated homes.
She released a country music album in the 1990s
TV wasn't Maureen McCormick's only career outlet. In 1995, the same year "The Brady Bunch Movie" was released, she recorded the country music CD, "When You Get A Little Lonely." Tracks included the songs "Tell Mama" and "Cloud of Dust," but unfortunately, the musical release broke Marcia Brady's perfect awards streak. The album received shockingly bad reviews, but it didn't get McCormick down. At the time, the actress told Entertainment Weekly that she was just fulfilling a dream she'd had two decades prior. "I was offered a country recording contract but turned it down to go to UCLA. I was always sorry," she said.
McCormick made her singing debut on "The Brady Bunch" ("Sunshine Day," anyone?), but she admitted the cast on her show was no Partridge Family. Still, unlike Peter (Christopher Knight), whose voice could crack at any second, Marcia could sing. McCormick held on to one more dream, which was to open for her music idol, Linda Ronstadt.
McCormick competed on Dancing with the Stars
With scripted TV and music on her resume, Maureen McCormick also gave reality TV a try. Over the years, the star competed on "Gone Country," "I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here," and "Celebrity Fit Club," where she was crowned the winner after dropping 38 pounds, per OK! magazine. After going from 154 pounds to 116 while on the boot camp-based reality show, McCormick did gain some of the weight back. She told OK! that she's always been a yo-yo when it comes to her weight. "I'm 5'3, I'm always up and down," she said. "I love to eat but I just feel best when I'm at a thin weight. I get to a place in my life sometimes where I don't exercise. I'm an all or nothing girl."
A few years later, she got a major workout on "Dancing With the Stars," where she was paired with pro dancer Artem Chigvintsev. While she was eliminated from the ABC celebrity ballroom competition after seven weeks, McCormick had an unexpected blessing, with her "Brady Bunch" mom Florence Henderson in the audience to support her. The "DWTS" taping would be the last time McCormick would see Henderson, who died three days later on November 24, 2016, per Entertainment Weekly.
She spilled everything in a shocking tell-all
Maureen McCormick's real life was not all sunshine days. In 2008, she penned a shocking tell-all memoir that made Barry Williams' "Growing Up Brady" look like a kiddie story. In her book, "Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice," McCormick stunned fans as she revealed that as a young adult, she had sex with a cocaine dealer for drugs, partied at the Playboy mansion, and blew a huge interview with movie mogul Stephen Spielberg because she was high. McCormick also battled depression while putting on a sunny persona for TV.
"As a teenager, I had no idea that few people are everything they present to the outside world," she wrote in her book, per The New York Daily News. "Yet there I was, hiding the reality of my life behind the unreal perfection of Marcia Brady."
McCormick also said she hit "rock Bottom" in the mid-1980s when she was getting ready to film "The Brady Brides." She told Today that she was late for a screen test at the Paramount studio because she had been up for three days doing cocaine and that her agent had to break into her apartment and get her in the shower. "I couldn't hide anymore," she told the outlet. "Everyone knew — the producers knew, everyone at Paramount knew, the guys testing to play my husband knew. It was the first time I had to face that I really had a problem."
At the time, McCormick was dating her future husband, Michael Cummings, who gave her an ultimatum that if she didn't quit doing drugs he would leave her, according to Us Weekly. She has been sober for more than three decades.