Here's the story of two lovely ladies, both of them with hair of gold like their TV mother, who spent their childhood on and then parlayed that sitcom stardom into new careers as TV home décor experts.
Maureen McCormick and Eve Plumb, known worldwide as The Brady Bunch's Marcia and Jan, respectively, joined the HGTV family with A Very Brady Renovation in 2019. The TV siblings, along with Barry Williams, Susan Olsen, Christopher Knight and Mike Lookinland, teamed up with a variety of HGTV stars to redo the inside of the home that provided the exterior shots of the Brady compound to look like the TV set. A pilot, Generation Renovation, followed for Plumb, as did a new gig for McCormick hosting Frozen in Time. Now the two are back on HGTV in Design At Your Door, helping families tackle problem areas in their homes—remotely.
The show is entirely self-taped, which presented a unique set of challenges.
"I think probably the biggest challenge was not being able to touch anything, actually. I have bought a lot of stuff online. I bought a lot of furniture online, put it together myself and that helps a lot. It would have been more helpful to be able to touch everything, but it's almost like you have an interpreter because then they can see it and touch it and they can tell you, 'Yes this works. No, it doesn't.' So, there's always a workaround," Plumb told E! News.
For McCormick, who said she rarely shops online and prefers to go into stores and interact with the purveyors and their goods, it was the technology. Suddenly, McCormick found her husband acting as her crew while she worked with the family on the other end of the screen.
"I think for me, the craziest thing [was] I had never zoomed in my life before this show. So, it was not in my reality at all and it was just bizarre! Seeing all of these heads on the screen was just crazy," McCormick said. "To not be in the space with the family…was crazy. The family that I was working with just really embraced this whole concept so much, they were so welcoming and so loving that I really did kind of feel like I was there with them."
The fact that Plumb and McCormick are so well-known for The Brady Bunch actually worked to their advantage when working in the design space. "They were very welcoming and trusted me, which is great. Because that's one of the main things you need as a designer is somebody to trust you, because you're going to say, 'Do this, do that, do this, do that,'" Plumb said.
"Right. I've only found everybody to be incredibly welcoming and what's really kind of crazy is they already feel, in some way, like they know me. Everyone always says, 'Oh, you feel like you're a part of the family,'" McCormick added.
When they signed up for A Very Brady Renovation, both Plumb and McCormick said they had it in the back of their minds that it could lead to more projects on the network.
"I had it in mind because you know, doing designing on TV is like my dream job," Plumb, who is a admitted big fan of Nicole Curtis and Rehab Addict, said with a laugh. "To be able to do this is an absolute dream job for me because it's something I just love so much. I love to work with textures and colors and perspective and get that whole design feel that that comes from the macro to the micro, from the very big pieces of the various small touches that has a through line through it. And to get to do it for such nice people and to get to do it for HGTV, I tell you, it couldn't have happened at a better time than when I was panicking about the state of the world. [Laughs.]"
McCormick said she grew up in real estate when her father, a teacher, began dappling to make extra money. Renovation is something she continued with her husband. "I have always loved all of the areas of design. I love the whole network and all of the different things. I love the, the home design and the food and the DIYs and the gardens. They're all things that I have always loved my whole life. So, yeah, I was actually really hoping to get into this world, and it feels like it's happened so organically, which is really amazing," she said.
A Very Brady Renovation was the first time in roughly 15 years that all six of Brady kids had been together in one spot. While they're not in production together now, they have been in touch—sort of. Plumb said she had a Zoom call with Knight a few months ago and McCormick said she has "been keeping in touch with most everyone."
"Tell anybody you talk to, tell them I say, ‘Hi,'" Plumb told McCormick.
"I will! I will. I definitely will. Yeah. So, yeah, it was so wonderful. It had been a really long time since we had all been together and it's really cool to see who people are today and what they're doing. It's awesome…It's so nice to reconnect with people that you care about," McCormick said.
Design at Your Door airs Thursdays, 9 p.m. on HGTV.