Last year, Maureen McCormick exposed her fleshy 50-year-old body on VH1's "Celebrity Fit Club." Earlier this year, she exposed her spirit and soul by singing a reflective country ballad she wrote on CMT's "Gone Country."
Now the former Marcia Brady of "Brady Bunch" fame has exposed her often sordid past in a memoir, "Here's the Story."
" 'Celebrity Fit Club' was the first time on TV I was totally myself," she said in an interview last week before her appearance at 7 p.m. Monday at Outwrite Books. "I didn't have to hide. I put everything out there, and it felt great. I've been hiding so many things over the years, so why not put it out there? It can help other people."
Among the book's revelations:
• In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the former Brady Bunch star said she picked up a cocaine habit that included trading sex for drugs.
• She botched an audition with Steven Spielberg for "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
• In the 1970s, she hung out with the Jackson family, bonding more with LaToya than Michael.
• She had a date with Steve Martin, but her drug problem caused her to be a space cadet. Result: no second date.
• She was ashamed of her mom for many years because she had syphilis and had been institutionalized for a time. McCormick's own depression was mollified in the 1990s by Prozac.
"I was surprised I never ended up in jail" given her drug problem, McCormick said. "I'm also shocked it never got out."
In the mid-1980s, she cleaned herself up and married fellow actor Michael Cummings, a low-key stabilizing force in her life to this day. ("He's my rock," she said.)
Cletus T. Judd, the country parody singer and 94.9/The Bull morning host, was on "Celebrity Fit Club" with McCormick. He said he bonded with her instantly because they shared similar past drug problems.
"During the show, we talked three, four days a week, helping each other out," Judd said. "I'm proud of her. Having grown up watching Marcia Brady, and to sit there and be friends with her was truly a unique experience for a redneck from Georgia like me."
McCormick's difficult past also helps explain why she bonded so much with troubled R&B singer and former Atlantan Bobby Brown on "Gone Country." The pair became the "odd couple" on the show, and their friendship led to the recent spinoff "Outsiders Inn," where she, Carnie Wilson and Brown ran a bed and breakfast in a small Tennessee town.
"My favorite moment on that show was doing moonshine with Bobby Brown," she said. "It tasted a bit like apples." (The mayor, she said, gave them the moonshine to sample.)
McCormick says she has come to accept and even embrace Marcia Brady. Hardly a day goes by without someone saying "Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!" to her.
"I'm totally OK with it," she said. "She was a good character. I love her."
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