Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
Barry Williams entered our homes every week as Greg Brady on “The Brady Bunch.”
This Saturday, he comes to the Capital Remodel + Garden Show at Dulles Expo Center.
“It’s a meet and greet,” Williams told WTOP. “I’ll be enjoying the show as well, because I love remodeling and I love gardening, so I’ll have a chance to look around. … They’ve asked me to do a sit-down interview, question and answer. … I don’t know if we’ll do the handshake thing because of the pandemic, but we’ll have a chance to answer questions.”
He’s also planning to bring his trusty guitar to play a couple tunes.
“A little ‘Sunshine Day’ action — that’s probably the best-known ‘Brady Bunch’ song — ‘I think I’ll go for a walk outside,'” Williams said. “It’s not as much fun if you’re not doing the ‘Brady’ choreography so I’ve figured out a way to get the lyrics on a screen with a bouncing ball. I teach the Brady choreography. … So come be an Honorary Brady.”
He recently appeared on HGTV’s “A Very Brady Renovation” (2019), taking the house shown as the TV exterior and making its interior a replica of the “Brady Bunch” set.
“It was really more of a demo rebuild than a remodel,” Williams said. “It was an exterior of a house that didn’t match the interior of our set. … That house is one story, so we had to add a whole upstairs, staircase. … It’s almost a 100% faithful replication of what the set looked like. If you walk in that house now, you will be in the ‘Brady Bunch’ living room.”
The private home was once owned by an elderly couple, whose kids sold it to HGTV for twice the asking price in order to remodel it for eight episodes of reality television.
“Now they’re not doing anything with it,” Williams said. “They just keep a guard there to keep it safe. … They can’t make it into a tourist attraction and charge [money], because it’s in a residential neighborhood. I’ve heard them talk about everything from a VRBO to literally house-moving it to Las Vegas, planting it down and building a hotel behind it!”
Born in Santa Monica, California in 1954, Williams knew he wanted to be an actor.
“I was a neighbor of Peter Graves, who we all know as the silver-haired Mr. Phelps on ‘Mission Impossible,'” he said. “Around 10 or 11, I marched into the kitchen and told my parents they were standing in the way of my destiny. I wanted a career in show business. Over their objections, I started studying acting, television scenes, even how to audition.”
His first TV role came in the drama series “Run for Your Life” starring Ben Gazzara.
“A series about a man who was dying of a disease and he had to cram an entire lifetime into two years — but the series ran for two!” Williams said. “Then [came] ‘Dragnet,’ ‘The F.B.I.,’ ‘The Invaders,’ ‘Mod Squad,’ ‘Gomer Pyle,’ ‘That Girl,’ westerns called ‘Lancer,’ and I ended up doing ‘Mission Impossible,’ my favorite show, so that came full circle.”
His big break came as the eldest son Greg Brady on “The Brady Bunch” (1969-1974).
“The studio was aware of me,” Williams said. “They had a big casting call. They brought in over 1,200 kids to try to match everybody up and get them to look alike and the right ages, etc. … They just started whittling it down, so there were probably three or four different meetings and screen tests over the course of three months, then they arrived at all of us.”
What was his personal favorite storyline from the beloved sitcom?
“Johnny Bravo was a fun storyline,” Williams said. “The kids had done an amateur contest of music and the producer wanted to meet with Greg and turn him into a rock star called Johnny Bravo. … The only reason he’s really there is they prepared a costume for another Johnny Bravo, but that Johnny Bravo got fired, so they picked me because I fit the suit.”
He says people still quote “The Brady Bunch” to him all the time.
“I’ve been asked about the episodes and if I say, ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia,’ most people know what I’m talking about, or if I say, ‘Oh, my nose, my nose,’ they’re thinking about Peter throwing a football into Marcia’s nose,” Williams said. “That’s been a constant all these years, all these decades, because we have new generations of viewers.”
Today, he’s the oldest surviving cast member.
“I was always the oldest kid,” Williams said. “Mike [Robert Reed], Carol [Florence Henderson] and Alice [Ann B. Davis] have passed away. Most recently was Florence Henderson just a couple of years ago, so I’ve kind of moved up into the Mike Brady role.”
The loss of on-screen parents hits hard, just like the recent passing of Bob Saget from “Full House,” in which Williams once played John Stamos’ rival in Jesse & The Rippers.
“I think because of the medium, it’s so intimate, you’re coming into people’s homes, their living rooms, bed rooms … there’s a connection,” Williams said. “People feel that they know these characters as they’re portrayed, so there’s a connection. And it’s a reminder of a time, it’s entertainment, but it turns on a heart light. It’s like losing a family member.”
After “The Brady Bunch” was canceled in 1974, Williams toured with Broadway musicals.
“The thing that I landed on was musical theater,” Williams said. The first thing I did was move from Los Angeles to New York. They were going to put out a national tour of ‘Pippin.’ … I flew back to meet with the producers and Bob Fosse, the director. … I won the role. … I went out to 90 cities, six months, bus and truck. You’ve gotta be a kid to do that!”
He returned to L.A. to do the variety show “The Brady Bunch Hour” (1976-1977), as well as “Three’s Company” (1982), “General Hospital” (1984) and “Murder She Wrote” (1987).
“It’s all about variety,” Williams said. “I’ve been very fortunate, lucky, at least consistent with television, some feature films, I’ve been a producer, I wrote a book, ‘Growing Up Brady,’ I produced that into a TV movie for NBC, I’ve been a DJ, I worked on SiriusXM for the ’70s channel for about three years and had a great time with it, so I’m very lucky.”
His autobiography “Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg” (1992) was a bestseller.
“I was doing another Broadway tour … changing cities every week, but during the day I would … do book signings,” Williams said. “Harper Collins told me that I had one of the longest book tours ever. … People would be lined up all around the store and I sold a lot of books. … Today it would be very hard to find a copy that hasn’t been signed by me!”
He even made a cameo in “The Brady Bunch Movie” (1995), in which the role of Greg was played by Christopher Daniel Barnes, who voiced Eric in “The Little Mermaid” (1989).
“I was a music producer and Greg Brady wanted me to produce his music, pitching a ‘Brady Bunch’ song and I said, ‘No chance, Greg,'” Williams said. “Betty Thomas directed that. I think she did a great job. She found the right pocket for the humor without being condescending. I thought it was very cute — but no so much the follow-up movie.”
Today, he plays concerts with his trio Barry Williams & The Traveliers.
“It’s electric guitar, acoustic guitar and my wife is a singer, hula dancer and plays percussion,” Williams said. “I’m living the Johnny Bravo dream!”
He now lives in Branson, Missouri, hopping on Zoom to host the new “Real Brady Bros” podcast with his former co-star Christopher Knight, who played Peter Brady.
“It was his idea and he said, ‘A lot of the shows I don’t remember well because I was so young [but] being older, you were much more involved, plus you wrote the book,” Williams said. “We jump around [episodes] … breaking down what the little moral was, what the takeaway was, who the guest stars were. … We just dropped this thing two weeks ago.”
Wouldn’t you know it? Their Zoom windows look a lot like the “Brady Bunch” credits.
“Would it not be cool if we got residuals for that?” Williams said.
Hear our full conversation on my podcast “Beyond the Fame.”
