Maureen McCormick actually hurt her nose the day that ''The Subject Was Noses'' aired
Sometimes Brady life imitates Brady art.
Whether you're a Brady fan or not, everyone knows that one of the most memorable and iconic episodes of The Brady Bunch is the season four episode, "The Subject Was Noses." If you've been living under a rock, let us refresh your memory: Just before a big date, Marcia Brady is accidentally hit with a football, injuring her nose. You might remember her oft-quoted line "Oh, my nose!" along with the oft-utilized date excuse, "Something suddenly came up."
Well, in her book, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice, Maureen McCormick gave readers an inside look at the episode, including a particularly freaky tidbit about the day that it was aired. While still filming the show, McCormick was driving her car when she got into a fairly serious accident. She recounted the incident, and wrote, "The next thing I knew, I had plowed into a car that was making a left turn in front of me."
Upon impact, McCormick's face slammed into the steering wheel, injuring her. She wrote, "I looked in the mirror and saw that (my nose) was huge and swollen." McCormick was immediately taken to the hospital, and while it wasn't broken, she was still in a fair amount of pain and had to wait until the nose healed on its own.
McCormick said that the wreck and injury took place on a Friday, the same night a new episode of The Brady Bunch was premiering. What episode was it, you ask? Well, in a bizarre coincidence, the episode premiering was, in fact, "The Subject Was Noses"
McCormick then went on to admit that while she was aware of the episode's place in viewers' hearts, she herself actually didn't like it. She explained, "Practically everyone on the set from the prop man to Lloyd Schwartz threw a Nerf football at my face, trying to get it in the perfect spot."
The football shot that hits Marcia in the final take of the episode was thrown by Peter Knight, and McCormick said, "I couldn't have been happier when the director finally said, 'Perfect! Print that one!'"