Susan Olsen, who played the youngest Brady of the bunch, recently revealed that a key wardrobe requirement to play Cindy caused some serious personal damage when she was a kid.
Despite landing her role in The Brady Bunch at just seven years old, Olsen was required to bleach her hair every three weeks to maintain the Brady women’s blonde aesthetic, as she admitted during a Q&A at The Chocolate Expo at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, earlier this month, per People.
“You bet,” she told one fan when asked if she needed to dye her hair while playing the character from 1969 to 1974. “Every three weeks they had to dye my hair.”
And if you look closely during the third season, she said you’ll notice her hair “is kind of a different shade of blonde every episode.”
Apparently members of the crew “were trying out different things” when it came to achieving her platinum blonde color, which co-star Mike Lookinland, who played brother Bobby, pointed out “meant a whole cocktail of weird chemicals…in 1970.”
Eventually, those “weird chemicals” meant that her “hair had started to fall out.” As a result, she went back to having her mom take care of her hair, “every Friday night.”
She stuck with Miss Clairol’s “Classic Blonde,” while Lookinland needed to use the brand’s “Jet Black number 23” to maintain the Brady boys’ dark locks.
Her classic curls required a lot of work, too. With completely straight hair, she needed to sleep in rollers in order for it to “hold a curl,” crediting her mom, as well, for the look. “…my mother was responsible for those ringlets,” she said.
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