‘Brady Bunch’ star Eve Plumb is ‘so glad’ she didn’t land Linda Blair’s role in ‘The Exorcist’

Tabor BrewsterSat, November 14, 2026 at 5:00 PM UTC

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Eve Plumb in May 2026Credit: Frazer Harrison/GettyKey Points -

The Brady Bunch star Eve Plumb revealed that she auditioned for the role of Regan MacNeil in the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist.

Plumb said she was “so glad” she didn’t get the role, calling the movie “pretty awful” and admitting it terrified her.

The role ultimately went to Linda Blair, whose performance earned her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win.

Before Linda Blair shocked audiences as the demonically possessed Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist, another familiar child star had a shot at the role: The Brady Bunch’s Eve Plumb.

Plumb, 68, revealed on a recent episode of the Behind the Awards With Eila Mell and Bruce Gotlieb podcast that she auditioned for the 1973 horror classic while starring as Jan Brady on the beloved ABC sitcom.

Plumb, who played the middle Brady daughter throughout the five-season run of The Brady Bunch, from 1969 to 1974, said her experience with the legendary, perhaps cursed, horror production was brief.

“I went in for a reading and that was it,” she recalled. “So I don’t think I was even put on film.”

The role of Regan MacNeil helped the film achieve a level of notoriety never before seen at the cinema. The character’s grotesque transformation from a normal 12-year-old girl into a projectile-vomiting, bedridden demon was the stuff of nightmares. Theatergoers fainted during screenings, religious organizations denounced the film, and it was banned on home video in the UK for over a decade.

Even Plumb herself was evidently not a fan.

“Yeah, I’m so glad I didn’t get that,” Plumb said. “It’s a pretty awful movie. Terrified me.”

Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil in ‘The Exorcist’Credit: Screen Archives/Getty

Blair ultimately earned critical acclaim as the obscenity-hurling girl-turned-demon, picking up both an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actress as the film became a sensation. The Exorcist, also starring Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, and Jason Miller, was the first horror movie nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.

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The film was adapted from William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel of the same name, which Plumb recalled reading in her recent memoir Happiness Included.

“I had read the book, surprisingly, even though I was young,” she wrote.

Eve Plumb as Jan Brady on ‘The Brady Bunch’Credit: CBS via Getty

But the screen adaptation proved to be much more frightening to a young Plumb, who slept in her mother’s bed for several nights after seeing it at the theater, according to her memoir.

Though Blair’s performance was praised, she also received significant media scrutiny and even death threats due to the taboo subject matter. Plumb, in her memoir, revealed that she sympathized with Blair for the effects the role would have on her career.

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“I have compassion for what the movie did for Linda Blair and how it would be the role the press would never let her leave behind,” Plumb wrote in Happiness Included.

And her lifelong distaste for horror movies goes beyond The Exorcist. When asked on the recent podcast if she considers herself a “horror movie person,” Plumb was rather frank.

“No, I’m not,” she said. “But I do read all of Stephen King.”

on Entertainment Weekly

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