Here’s a story about a drag redo of ‘The Brady Bunch’
Classic sitcom episode gets a makeover on “Dragging the Classics” on Paramount+.
Audacious wigs, shady comments and a heartwarming message to love yourself. (Can I get an amen?)
No, we’re not talking about “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” although all are staples of VH1’s long-running drag competition. Instead, we’re referring to “The Brady Bunch,” which made misfit middle child Jan Brady (Eve Plumb) a bona fide queer icon with Season 2’s “Will the Real Jan Brady Please Stand Up?”
The classic 1971 episode of ABC’s comedy follows an exasperated Jan as she buys a curly black wig for a friend’s birthday party, in an attempt to stand out from her more popular – and also blond – sisters Marcia (Maureen McCormick) and Cindy (Susan Olsen). But the fresh coif backfires: Jan’s stepbrothers Greg (Barry Williams) and Bobby (Mike Lookinland) compare it to Davy Crockett and a skunk.
“They were pretty sharp with those reads,” says Shea Coulee, winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” Season 5, who stars as eldest daughter Marcia in a new crossover special “Dragging the Classics: The Brady Bunch” (now streaming on Paramount+).
“I was like, ‘Dang, these brothers are really letting Jan have it when she’s just trying to express herself.’ ”
In “Dragging the Classics,” queens from across the “Drag Race” franchise team up with “Brady Bunch” stars to recreate the episode almost verbatim, in full ’70s attire. Current “All Stars” contender Kylie Sonique Love steps in as Jan.
“She really got the walk down,” says Plumb, 63, who makes a cameo appearance as Lucy, the girl whose birthday party at which Jan hopes to make a splash. For her, “it was really fun to step outside and play a different character like Lucy, especially in a little heightened way with the big wig. Although it’s a little freakish to see me dressed up as a 12-year-old girl.”
Williams, 66, is now dad Mike Brady, originally portrayed by Robert Reed.
“I feel more like the dad now, so that was probably less of a reach for me than it would’ve been trying to play 15-yearold Greg,” Williams says. “Robert Reed was a mentor of mine. I studied his movements during the shows, so bringing some of the ways he would stand and what he would do with his hands seemed pretty effortless. I wonder how he would review my interpretation?” he said of his sitcom dad, who died in 1992.
RuPaul, who appeared in 1995’s “The Brady Bunch Movie” and its 1996 sequel, shows up in the half-hour special as the wig shop clerk who sells Jan her new ’do. The new cast is filled out by “Drag Race” Season 13 runner-up Kandy Muse as youngest daughter Cindy and Season 6 winner Bianca Del Rio as mom Carol Brady.
The queens were instructed to play their characters totally straight, so “it was nice to be subtle, which is a rarity for me: playing a functioning, kind human being like Carol Brady,” Del Rio says.
“And the (original cast members) were so welcoming and generous. I personally enjoyed the downtime, just hearing all their stories about every episode. I lived for that.”
In the nearly five decades since the original “Brady Bunch” went off the air in 1974, Jan Brady has taken on a life of her own online through various memes (“Sure, Jan”) and catchphrases (“Marcia, Marcia, Marcia”). But part of the reason LGBTQ people have embraced the character – and this episode in particular – is Jan’s realization that she doesn’t need to change who she is in order to be accepted.
“We love Jan. Jan is an icon,” Coulee says. “That’s something a lot of people in the community can identity with: feeling like an they’re an other or an outsider, and just wanting to find a way to express themselves authentically.”