“The Brady Bunch” dad Robert Reed was so deeply closeted that his TV daughter, Eve Plumb, had no idea he was gay, even as an adult.
It was “never an issue,” Plumb, who played middle daughter Jan Brady, told Page Six in a recent exclusive interview. “It never was apparent, even as an adult.”
Reed died of colon lymphoma in 1992. He was 59.
After Reed’s passing, details of his death certificate were made public. It was revealed that the actor was HIV-positive, having been diagnosed the previous year. Although he did not have AIDS at the time of his death, his doctor listed his positive status as one of the “significant conditions that contributed to his death.”
Plumb, 67, is still upset over the press coverage surrounding her beloved TV dad’s passing.
“What was sad was the way it was splashed all over the papers and made to be so lurid,” she shared, noting that “he was part of a group of people who had to hide [their sexuality] and continued to hide who they were and be vilified for having a disease that was none of their doing.”
“To be blamed for that was ridiculous,” she noted.
Florence Henderson, who played Reed’s wife on the sitcom, spoke about the “Defenders” alum in a 2000 interview with ABC News.
“Here he was, the perfect father of this wonderful little family, a perfect husband. Off camera, he was an unhappy person – I think had Bob not been forced to live this double life, I think it would have dissipated a lot of that anger and frustration.”
Henderson shared that she had “a lot of compassion” for Reed, “because I knew he was suffering from keeping this secret, which would have probably destroyed his career back then.”
In her upcoming memoir, “Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond,” Plumb only has lovely things to say about her adult co-stars, Reed, Henderson and Ann B. Davis, who played Alice.
“They were very professional,” Plumb explained. “Florence had a great sense of humor and would keep things light, and Bob was always going to make sure that we took that extra minute to make it a little bit more realistic, and Anne was there to really help us learn how filming works and how the cameras work.”
Plumb also spoke to Page Six about having a “sweet” but unsuccessful date with her TV sibling Christopher Knight, aka Peter Brady, shortly after filming ended in 1974.
“It was fun, but we were really already by that time just too good of friends to make that transition into being romantic partners,” she explained.
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