Maureen McCormick is angry after anti-vax groups began using a scene from an episode of Brady Bunch to promote their agenda.
The actress, who portrayed the character of Marcia Brady on the cult classic sitcom, says she disagrees with anti-vax groups using her as the face of their cause.
After an outbreak of measles across the United States — a disease that was thought to have been wiped out back in 2000 — a scene from a Brady Bunch episode from 50 years ago popped up online.
In that episode, all six of the Brady Bunch kids came down with the measles and had to stay home from school. When talking to her husband, their mom said that they had a fever, bumps…and a big smile because they got to miss school. It made measles look like a joke, but that is far from the truth.
“Untreated measles can lead to life-threatening complications,” said Dr. Natalie Azar, an NBC medical contributor told Today.
There have been 695 cases of measles reported across 22 states in the recent outbreak.
In the Brady Bunch clip being shared — which originally aired in 1969 — McCormick’s character Marcia says that if you get any disease, it might as well be the measles.
Did the Brady Bunch promote anti-vax information? https://t.co/n8Ssjs5ekr
— Vaccine Hero (@VaccineHero) April 29, 2019
After seeing the clip being used by anti-vax groups, McCormick told NPR: “It’s really wrong when people use people’s images today to promote whatever they want to promote and the person’s image they’re using they haven’t asked or they have no idea where they stand on the issue.”
McCormick also made it clear that she had her child vaccinated and admitted that she came down with measles in real-life and it was not like the Brady Bunch because she “got really sick.”
“Having the measles was not a fun thing,” she said. “I remember it spread through my family.”