Christine Taylor says she was told to lose weight for Brady Bunch role

Christine Taylor has revealed she was asked to lose weight before playing Marcia Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie.

After booking her dream role as Marcia Brady in the 1995 movie, the actress was stunned to learn that she needed to lose 10lbs (4.5kg), even though she wasn't "a super heavy person".

"The one thing that I got, and I was not a super heavy person, but they asked me to lose 10 lbs," she told Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey on the Office Ladies podcast. "They wanted me to lose 10 lbs., but it didn't matter. I was like, 'I'll lose 10 lbs.' Of course, I was embarrassed when that ask came my way."

The 55-year-old, who was 23 when she played the teenage character, added that the request was "so '90s" and would "never happen today".

Although she lost the weight before production began, the pounds slowly returned throughout the shoot because Taylor would "treat herself" with frozen yoghurt "with a huge thing of sprinkles on the side" after wrapping a day's filming.

The Zoolander star pointed out that viewers can spot the fluctuation in her weight if they watch the movie "very closely".

"I'll come into a scene looking a little rounder, and then I exit the scene looking a little thinner, just because of how they had to reshoot things," she said.

Taylor, who is married to actor Ben Stiller, reprised her role as Marcia for the follow-up, A Very Brady Sequel, in 1996. She did not return for the 2002 TV movie, The Brady Bunch in the White House, because the Brady children were recast.