Eve Plumb Admitted She Isn't Living Large Off The Brady Bunch Residuals

Eve Plumb's role as Jan Brady on "The Brady Bunch" cemented her place in pop culture history, but it wasn't exactly a path to wealth. The iconic show, which aired from 1969-1974, went on to become one of the most beloved sitcoms in history, though you wouldn't know it from the residuals (or lack thereof) that Plumb has received. The actor shared the ugly truth about her compensation in her memoir, "Happiness Included: Jan Brady and Beyond." She wrote (via Parade), "If I had a dime for every rerun episode, I'd pay off the national deficit. I don't." According to Plumb, her former castmates are in the same boat. "We don't make residuals," she claimed, in an interview with PauseRewind (via CBS 6 Albany).

While the lack of residuals may lead you to think of Plumb as another celebrity that is poorer than you originally thought, her financial decisions indicate she's pretty well off. In 1969, when she was just 11 years old, Plumb purchased a $55,300 Malibu home. Fast forward to 2016 and her investment paid off, with the sale of her home netting her $3.9 million. So, even without those "Brady Bunch" residuals, Plumb seems to be doing okay.  

While "The Brady Bunch" cast have a few dark secrets that make it hard to root for some of them, their disappointment over compensation from the show is very understandable. Susan Olsen, who played Cindy Brady, appeared on "Where Are They Now" way back in 2013, and explained how little the cast was paid in syndication. "People do tend to assume that we made a lot of money off 'The Brady Bunch' because it's on all the time," she said. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case due to Hollywood norms at the time. "It wasn't like we signed some bad deal," the sitcom star, who more or less disappeared after the show, noted. "This is the way things were before 1973. People only got paid for reruns for the first 10 runs."

Despite the lack of residuals, Christopher Knight, who portrayed Peter Brady, was grateful for his "Brady Bunch" salary. "I believe the Bradys helped ... I mean, literally, there might not have been a way to exist where we were without some way of making those payments," he said on "The Real Brady Bros," a podcast he hosts with Barry Williams, who played his onscreen brother, Greg Brady. While Knight appreciates that his salary gave his family "the resources to pay the rent," it was a bit of a rude awakening when that cash source dried up. He felt it was a situation where the money from the show "got me to 18 and then eject."