Christine Taylor is looking back on an uncomfortable moment from her early film career, revealing that she was asked to lose 10 pounds while playing Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie.
The 55-year-old actress shared the story during a new episode of the Office Ladies podcast, telling hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey that the request came despite the fact that she did not consider herself overweight. “The one thing that I got – and I was not a super heavy person – but they asked me to lose 10 pounds,” she recalled.
Taylor said she ultimately went along with the demand, though the conversation left a lasting impression. “Of course, I was embarrassed when that ask came my way,” she admitted.
The actress, who is married to Ben Stiller, described the weight-loss request as very much a product of its era, calling it “so 90s” and adding that she believes it “would never happen today.”
Taylor also joked that sharp-eyed fans who watch the movie “very closely” may be able to spot that she put the weight back on after production wrapped, thanks in part to indulging in frozen yogurt once filming was over.
‘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,’ Taylor explained.
Christine Taylor, 55, has revealed that she was asked to drop 10 pounds while starring as Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie; pictured in 2023
The actress recalled the experience on the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, saying, ‘The one thing that I got – and I was not a super heavy person – but they asked me to lose 10 pounds’; Seen in a still from the movie
Taylor auditioned for the role after playing Marcia in a stage version of the ’70s series called The Real Live Brady Bunch.
Recounting how she got the opportunity, she said that series creator Sherwood Schwartz left an ‘out of the blue’ message on her answering machine, asking to meet with her.
‘I went to Sherwood Schwartz’s house and got to talk to him about The Brady Bunch,’ she shared. ‘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 felt confident about being offered the role after her initial audition, and said she knew ‘nobody could do it better.’
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Earlier this year, Taylor opened up about her years-long separation from Stiller, 60, and what led them to give their marriage another chance.
While on the McBride Rewind podcast, she described that time of her life as ‘challenging.’
‘I think at that moment in time for us we weren’t on the same page with a lot of things,’ she host Josh McBride.
‘I can talk about it now… but in the moment, I mean, it was very difficult to come to that decision.’
Taylor pictured with husband Ben Stiller, 60, at the Met Gala in May
‘It was not light. It was not without a heavy heart and feeling really, even, dejected at the time, of like, this is not how I imagined it was going to be and we should have been able to work it out,’ she remembered.
The couple married in 2000 and share daughter Ella, 24, and son Quinlin, 21. They announced their separation in 2017.
‘Through it all, we were always in contact. We were co-parenting together. We were spending time together as a family,’ Taylor said.
The ‘silver lining’ of the pandemic acted as a forced pause, allowing them to re-evaluate their relationship.
‘If there’s a silver lining for us during Covid, that was the little gift,’ Taylor explained.
‘We all kind of bubbled up together with our kids. Our daughter was graduating high school at the time, our son was graduation eighth grade. We all were in the house together and we had nothing but time.’
‘So Ben and I spent a lot of time just working on us with a therapist and we’d log into Zoom and we’d do our therapy sessions and really found the way back,’ she said, adding: ‘I think it’s something people don’t love to talk about because it feels like a failure.’