‘The Brady Bunch’ Tried to DEI ‘Whitest Show on Television’

For most of its five seasons, acknowledges sitcom star Barry Williams, The Brady Bunch was “the whitest show on television.”

But years before words like diversity, equity and inclusion became political hot potatoes, the show’s producers made “very deliberate attempts to try and integrate the show,” Williams said on a recent episode of The Brady Bros recap podcast, per Entertainment Weekly.

“There were a couple of episodes that specifically dealt with that,” said Williams. “And we see this a lot, especially when there are crowds and then maybe there are two or three friends, we’ll see different ethnicities and et cetera.”

Soooo… producers’ efforts to be more inclusive consisted of people of color existing in background shots? Well, it was the early 1970s, when only a handful of non-white actors appeared on network shows at all. Guess they had to start somewhere. 

Some of those actors even got lines, like in a Season Five episode called “Miss Popularity.” That’s the one that introduced Jan's Black friend, Shirley. (Note that it’s also the only episode in which Jan had a Black friend, Shirley or otherwise.)

“I thought this was nice because this is a young lady of color, and this didn't happen a lot,” Williams said. “There was a lot of influence there by (producer) Lloyd (Schwartz) and Sherwood (Schwartz) of making sure everyone was represented. This is one of those cases, and she’s adorable, and it was fun to see.”

The sitcom’s DEI initiatives really kicked into high gear with the show’s next episode, “Kelly’s Kids.” It’s one of the weirdest Brady Bunch installments ever, mostly because the Brady family barely appears. Instead, it’s a backdoor pilot for a show in which a couple decides to adopt three boys who just happen to be white, Black and Asian. The couple — friends of the Bradys even though the show never mentioned them before or after this episode — would have raised their diverse, inclusive brood on their own sitcom. But the network never picked up Kelly’s Kids. 

Viewers in the Entertainment Weekly comments section also remembered The Brady Bunch making an effort to include kids of color. “One of my Black friends from college … played Cindy’s friend in the safety monitor episode,” remembered L.

“They had a Black girl play one of the friends at a slumber party,” added T. “I was amazed being that you rarely saw a person of color on these types (of) shows during the late ‘60s early ‘70s.”

And there’s more! “Another Black girl approached Peter and started a conversation with him when he thought he had no personality,” added L, the Brady Bunch fan with the encyclopedic memory. “There was also an Asian kid with Peter in the episode where Bobby fell out of a treehouse climb and sprained his ankle.”

Commenter Tony probably summed it up best, though: “At least they tried back then.”