Eve Plumb auditioned to play Regan MacNeil in 1973’s The Exorcist, then found the finished movie so frightening that she slept in her mother’s bed afterward. The actress best known as Jan Brady recalled in her memoir, Happiness Included, that she stayed there “for the next couple of nights.”
The audition came up when Plumb appeared in October on the podcast Behind the Awards with Eila Mell and Bruce Gotlieb. “I went in for a reading and that was it,” she said. “So I don’t think I was even put on film.”
She was already playing the middle Brady daughter on The Brady Bunch, which ran from 1969 to 1974. Linda Blair ultimately landed the role of the demon-possessed girl in director William Friedkin’s film, starring alongside Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow and Jason Miller.
Plumb had read William Peter Blatty’s novel, but the adaptation left her grateful she hadn’t gotten the part. “Yeah, I’m so glad I didn’t get that. It’s a pretty awful movie. Terrified me,” she said on the podcast.
Blair earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance. Plumb also addressed the lasting association between Blair and Regan in her memoir: “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.”
