Christine Taylor has opened up about being pressured to slim down for her breakout film role.
Taylor, 55, told “Office Ladies” hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey on Wednesday’s podcast episode that producers of 1995’s “The Brady Bunch Movie” asked her to drop 10 pounds before cameras rolled. The request came after she had already won the part of Marcia Brady, a role she felt uniquely destined to play.
The “Hey Dude” alum traced her path to the film back to a live stage production called “The Real Live Brady Bunch,” where she first played the character. That performance caught the attention of Sherwood Schwartz, the original series creator, who left an unexpected message on her answering machine. “I went to Sherwood Schwartz’s house and got to talk to him about ‘The Brady Bunch,'” Taylor recalled. “It was a pinch-me moment … I cannot believe to this day that I didn’t keep my little tape from the answering machine.”
She walked into that meeting as a devoted fan of the classic 1970s sitcom, and she walked out convinced the film role was hers. “Nobody could do it better than [me],” she told Fischer and Kinsey she had thought at the time.
But the triumph curdled once production began. Taylor described the weight-loss directive as “so ’90s” and a product of “a very different time in the industry.” She was direct about the physical reality: “The one thing that I got — and I was not a super heavy person — but they asked me to lose 10 pounds.”
Taylor said she ultimately agreed to shed the weight, though the request stung. “Of course, I was embarrassed when that ask came my way,” she admitted. She added that such a demand “would never happen today,” though she noted she was far from the only actress facing that pressure during that era.
The “Wedding Singer” star found a small measure of revenge in the frame-by-frame details of the finished film. She told Fischer and Kinsey that attentive viewers can actually catch her regaining the weight throughout the movie, a side effect of rewarding herself with nonfat frozen yogurt once shooting ended. “I’ll come into a scene looking a little rounder, and then I exit the scene looking a little thinner, just because of how they had to reshoot things,” she said.
Taylor married actor Ben Stiller in May 2000 after meeting on the set of “Heat Vision and Jack.” The couple separated in 2017 following 17 years of marriage, then reconciled in February 2022. Stiller, 60, addressed the reunion publicly at the time. “We were separated and got back together, and we’re happy about that,” he said. “It’s been really wonderful for all of us. Unexpected, and one of the things that came out of the pandemic.” The couple share daughter Ella, 24, and son Quinlin, 21.
