'The Brady Bunch' star Susan Olsen admits she disliked her 'stupid' Cindy Brady character

The 64-year-old actress portrayed the youngest Brady child in the hit sitcom from 1969 to 1974. While Cindy was popular with many of the show's viewers, Olsen shared that she was not a fan of the character. 

"I used to say I wouldn't even have her for a friend because she was a tattletale.

"She was kind of stupid. That was basically it. I thought she wasn't bright at all," Olsen added.

"I really shouldn't be taking a dump all over this lovable character, but as a child, being stupid wasn't cute," she said. "I didn't know why that was cute."

Though she later came to understand the producers' motivations for how they developed the character, Olsen told People that playing Cindy was awkward for her when she was a child star. She went on to recall that some of Cindy's lines made her a target for bullying at school. 

"I probably understood it by the time I was a teenager, but when I was 9, the problem is I would do these things on the show and in the back of my head was like, 'Okay, how much am I going to get teased for this when I go back to school?'" Olsen said. "Cindy would say something stupid, and then I'd go to school."

The actress said her lisp was real, and the show's writers incorporated it into her character. However, Olsen told People that having her lisp become a major plot point of an episode "gave all kinds of ammo to my bullies."

"I was grateful that I wasn't being teased for something bad," she said. "It was something they were jealous of, and there were incidents that showed me why they were jealous, and I totally understood it," she said. 

"I thought, 'Well, you know, I don't blame them,'" Olsen added. "I'd be jealous of me, too, because look at the fun I have. I led two lives, and I never let the paths cross."

According to People magazine, Olsen now works as a children's acting coach at Vibes Performing Arts in Santa Clarita, California.