Susan Olsen Reveals Why She Secretly Wanted ‘The Brady Bunch’ Canceled

Former child actress Susan Olsen — who played pigtailed cutie Cindy on The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974 — admits she “felt guilt” when the series ended after five seasons “because I’d been praying for the show to be canceled.”

Olsen, 63, who portrayed the youngest of the six siblings in the combined Brady clan, confides she was somewhat relieved when the waning sitcom fizzled out just before she entered her teens — because “it’s bad enough to go through your awkward stage and to feel really ugly, but doing it on national TV is not something I wanted to do.”

Olsen also shares that she was frustrated over her clueless character being continually required to deliver dumb lines.

She recalls, “My mother always said, it’s cute,” but jokingly remarks, “She doesn’t have a functioning brain, but she’s cute.”

However, Olsen says that as time passed, she grew to appreciate the family-friendly series, which also featured fellow kids Maureen McCormick, Eve Plumb, Barry Williams, Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland, in addition to Robert Reed and Florence Henderson as their parents.

“We didn’t really know that we were that popular until we went out on the road,” Olsen says. “And I never had a sense of it being cool until years later.”

“I first became really proud of the show when I found out that child psychiatrists were using it,” she continued. “They were using episodes for kids that were coming from horrible abuse.”

“And I would’ve thought, well, why would they want to see this perfectly good family? They do,” Olsen added. “They want to see somebody being happy. They want to see that there’s hope.”