‘Brady Bunch' Star Eve Plumb Opens Up About One of Her Saddest TV Roles
Eve Plumb is best known for her role as Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch. But the actress had a successful acting career in the years before she signed onto the life-changing ABCsitcom. In the 1960s, the former child star appeared in guest roles on The Big Valley, Lassie, Dick Tracy, Mannix, and more.
In her memoir, Happiness Included, Plumb, 67, recalled working on the show Family Affair. The CBS series starred Brian Keith as a New York City bachelor who takes in his late brother's three orphaned children, Cissy, Jody, and Buffy (played by Kathy Garver, Johnny Whitaker, and Anissa Jones). Plumb appeared in the tearjerker 1968 episode titled "Christmas Came a Little Early." Her character's name was also Eve.
"I played a classmate of Buffy and Jody's who can only attend classes by speaker phone because I'm bedridden and terminally ill," Plumb shared in her book.
The actress noted that it was hard for her mom, Flora, to see her in a wheelchair wearing jaundiced makeup to make her look sick. She added that the last scene in the episode was Buffy sobbing over the death of Plumb's character. "I'm surprised my mom made it through the shooting schedule," Plumb wrote.
In an interview with Woman's World, Family Affair star Garver recalled the classic episode, which aired on November 11, 1968, and noted that the actors really cried during filming.
"Buffy's friend is very ill and she's dying," Garver recalled. "We don't see her die, but Buffy is changed, and Brian's trying to comfort her. There were real tears in that one."
Eve Plumb said her mom disconnected from the episode
Plumb also talked about the Family Affair episode in an interview with the Pop Culture Preservation Society. She noted that her mother was into astrology and the science of mind, which she described as "Christian science with aspirin."
"We certainly went to doctors and everything, but it was all about you know, speak your word and be positive and be careful what you tell people because not everybody wishes you well, which is generally true," Plumb shared. "But it had a big thread of creating your world out of, you're creating your reality. So you have to be careful what you say, how you act, and what you do."
"So she must have been able to do some kind of a disconnect in her head because for me to pretend to be sick, for me to have the actual, my own name of being a sick little girl who dies at Christmas… I mean, she probably had to like do extra affirmations by the side and take extra aspirin," Plumb added. "I don't know. I wish I could remember, you know, if she and the drive home [saying], you know, ‘You're not really sick and it's just play acting and all of that,' you know. She must have done that because she believes so strongly that your thoughts become your reality."
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The actress who played Buffy died at a young age
In her book, Plumb recalled working with Family Affair star Jones, who was about her age and had auditioned for TV roles and commercials with her in the past. While she didn't know Jones well, Plumb shared, "There was an unspoken link between us, knowing that other children didn't have lives like ours."
Jones died in 1976 of a drug overdose at age 18. Plumb admitted that when she found out about Jones's death, she was "sad but not shocked."
"I think unfortunately, it happened at such a remove," she added in the podcast interview. "Like for me, because that was my only interaction with her was when I worked with her on the show. That it was very much like you have read about the death of a celebrity that you are aware of but haven't seen in a long time. A little bit like whistling past the graveyard. That tragedy hadn't been my tragedy. That I was fortunate enough to not be addicted to drugs. And I don't know how that happened, but it just did."
"So, it was sad and strange," The Brady Bunch star said.
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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 7:13 AM.