I know Jan Brady might be jealous, but I talked to Maureen McCormick last light at a Television Academy event where she was the star attraction. I almost asked her if her nose was OK after that football hit it but then I remembered, hey, this is REAL life!
Maureen wanted to honor "Brady Bunch" creator/producer Sherwood Schwartz during an evening devoted to TV show theme songs. He also wrote the lyrics to the show's opening number...You remember, right? "Here's a story, of a man named Brady..."
"We're honoring Sherwood and his music and I'm just really honored to be a part of it all," Maureen said. "Honey, we are gonna sing it tonight! We are gonna sing it tonight."
And we did. As the opening credits were shown on screen. Maureen led the packed theater in a sing-along of the song about "three very lovely girls...all of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls."
Maureen told me that "it's sad" that TV theme songs that tell a story like the "Brady" theme have gone by the wayside.
Her book, "Here's A Story," is set to come out in June or July 2008 and has been getting a lot of attention over a report that she and co-star Eve Plumb engaged in some television incest - fooling around behind the scenes at one point.
Maureen would neither confirm or deny: "Can't say," she said, shaking her head with conviction.
I persisted. Is Eve Plumb (Jan), who has seemed the most eager to put the "Brady" years behind her, angry about the reports?
"Can't say. Can't say."
But she promises to reveal all in the book which she is knee-deep in writing right now: "It's really been very cathartic, very strange, very Twilight Zone. Just everything you can imagine, it's been. Happy, sad, tearful."
I had to know. What's it like to be Marcia Brady today since she still looks remarkably like she did when Jan hid all her trophies it a fit of jealousy and she and Greg fought over who would get the attic as their bedroom: "It's kind of hard not to go anywhere without being recognized but it's a great thing to be known for the show and it has such a warm place in everyone's heart so it's really wonderful."
Since she appeared on "Celebrity Fit Club," the usually low-profile McCormick has been back in the public eye in a way that she hadn't been in years. I wondered how she felt about the newfound attention: "It's great! It's great. I love it. It's really nice."