Christine Taylor has revealed that she was asked to lose 10 pounds while playing Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie, despite not considering herself overweight at the time.
The 55-year-old actress recalled the experience on the latest episode of the Office Ladies podcast, telling hosts Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, "The one thing that I got, and I was not a super heavy person, but they asked me to lose 10 pounds."
Taylor said she agreed to shed the weight, but added, "Of course, I was embarrassed when that ask came my way."
The actress, who is married to Ben Stiller, called the request "so 90s" and said it "would never happen today."
Taylor teased that viewers who watch the 1995 film closely can spot the moments she gained the weight back after eating frozen yogurt once filming wrapped. "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," she explained.
The Brady Bunch Movie was a big-screen comedy adaptation of the 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch, with Taylor's performance as Marcia Brady becoming one of the roles she remains best known for.
How Taylor landed the role of Marcia Brady
Taylor auditioned for the film role after already playing Marcia in a stage production based on the original series called The Real Live Brady Bunch.
Recounting how the opportunity came about, she said 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 said. "It was a pinch-me moment... I cannot believe to this day that I didn't keep my little tape from the answering machine."
Taylor said she felt confident about being offered the part after her initial audition, telling the podcast hosts she knew "nobody could do it better."
Taylor's separation from Ben Stiller
Earlier this year, Taylor opened up about her years-long separation from Stiller, 60, and what led the couple to give their marriage another chance.
Speaking on the McBride Rewind podcast, she described that period as "challenging." "I think at that moment in time for us we weren't on the same page with a lot of things," she told host Josh McBride. "I can talk about it now... but in the moment, I mean, it was very difficult to come to that decision."
"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.
Taylor and Stiller married in 2000 and share daughter Ella, 24, and son Quinlin, 21. The couple 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.
Finding their way back during the pandemic
Taylor described the Covid-19 pandemic as offering an unexpected "silver lining" that acted as a forced pause, allowing her and Stiller to re-evaluate their relationship.
"If there's a silver lining for us during Covid, that was the little gift," she explained. "We all kind of bubbled up together with our kids. Our daughter was graduating high school at the time, our son was graduating 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."
