Dancing With the Stars” alum Barry Williams revealed he was surprised when his 1970s sitcom “The Brady Bunch” was canceled in 1974.
The actor and DWTS season 32 fan favorite played Greg Brady for five seasons on the classic ABC sitcom. He told People magazine that when production halted that year, he fully expected to be called back.
“I thought we were coming back for sure,” Williams, 70, told the outlet in May 2025.
Barry Williams Said ‘The Brady Bunch’ Cast Members Had 5-Year Contracts
From 1969 to 1974, Williams co-starred on “The Brady Bunch” with Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, Ann B. Davis, and his TV siblings Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland, and Susan Olsen.
Speaking with People, he noted that the cast members were under five-year contracts.
“So the five years had run. For there to be another season, there would’ve had to be new negotiations,” he noted. “We stopped shooting in February. They would’ve had to start up again in June. There’s a little window in there to do some negotiations.”
“It was probably a month or two when we probably found out that we weren’t being picked up,” he added. “And so you’re not even around one another, it just … It’s gone. It dissipates. There’s no real formal exit or time to feel.”
Williams’ role as Greg Brady didn’t completely end that day in 1974. He and the cast would go on to reprise their roles in the spinoff variety series “The Brady Bunch Hour” (1976), and the TV movies “The Brady Girls Get Married’ (1981) and “A Very Brady Christmas” (1988). Williams also played Greg in the short-lived 1990 drama “The Bradys.”
Barry Williams Said He Had Been Promised the Show Would Go on Longer
While he continued to act and went on to a successful career in musical theater, Williams previously opened up about his disappointment over “The Brady Bunch” cancellation.
“I thought Greg was going to go to college,” Williams told Closer Weekly in a 2018 interview. “I was looking forward to getting out of the house and maybe moving into my own show and things like that, because I had those kinds of ambitious. And we had been promised that it would go another year. And then they pulled the plug.”
Williams revealed that after he received the phone call with the bad news, he drove to Paramount Studios to clean out his dressing room. He noted that he had to get permission from security to go through, and that his name on his usual parking space was already painted over with someone else’s name.
“I was gone,” he said. “I was out, and that was a major wake-up call. A wake-up call to the business and what to expect. Here today, gone tomorrow. Done.”
Williams told the outlet he did not let himself get bitter over the situation, which may be why he was able to find success in the industry for decades to come.
