The Brady bunch: Wayne Brady opens up about life in new reality series

“That’s the best way to teach someone how to treat you,” he explains. “I didn’t do that for a very long time and now I’ll be damned if I don’t.”

In the new Freeform reality series, “Wayne Brady: The Family Remix,” the Emmy-winning performer and game show host opens up about his private life, inviting viewers to meet his family, see behind the scenes of his multi-dimensional career and learn what it means to be pansexual – the latest surprise in his stellar journey.

Other labels, he says, seemed too limiting. “I hate being put in a box,” so when he saw “pansexual,” he felt it was the best term to explain his situation.

Daughter Maile, he says, “laid it out for me. Her generation is amazing … so I wanted to represent for everybody that just wants to love and find the person that they love. I’m not gay … and bisexual was seen as too limiting. If you don’t get it, I don’t know what to say. I’m still trying to get it myself.”

Those kinds of discussions, Brady says, fill the series. In addition to his 21-year-old daughter, “The Family Remix” includes ex-wife (and manager) Mandie Taketa and Taketa’s partner, Jason Michael Fordham.

New avenues

Initially, he tried to use the unconventional mix as the basis for a sitcom. “But no one could tell the story the way that we could just show it.”

Now, Fordham says, a lot of conversations that might have taken place over a long period of time get a forum over dinner. “Personally, I love the experience.”

Maile Brady, who’s an aspiring performer, says it was weird to have cameras in the house. When they stopped filming, “I kind of missed our crew.”

When snippets of the Brady bunch hit social media in the past, they didn’t hold the family accountable, the way a television show could.

“So, when I came out or when we shared various things, I could always hold my phone up and be like anybody else…but you turn off the camera and you start crying,” Wayne Brady says. “They were really catching what was happening and we couldn’t stop it.”

Another journey

Much of the story centers around the actor’s “mental health journey,” “having to live with whatever you think your secret is or your baggage,” Brady says. “I find I wasn’t being authentically me. I could make millions of people happy, but I would go home, and I’d feel like a piece of ----. I couldn’t do that anymore.”

Now, when he hosts “Let’s Make a Deal” or stars in a film, he’s not hiding his real feelings. “I’m having more fun.”

Key to making the reality show work is trust, Brady says. “You have to trust the team that you’re working with … and we didn’t always trust the team.”

The four in “The Family Remix” didn’t want their situation misrepresented. Pitting Wayne against Jason might have produced reality show results, “but that’s an error, in our opinion,” Fordham says. “I’m not jealous of Wayne. That’s not our dynamic.”

Brady says he was in the throes of depression when the episodes were shot. “The only way that I felt I could show up is if I needed to be needed. When I look back at, I was like, ‘People are going to think you are such a ----' because I couldn’t really be me. It makes me uncomfortable but I’m glad that folks will see it because that’s part of what we wanted to share.”

That was then...

Throughout his career, Brady has presented a glossier side. “I’m from the old school of showbiz where talent leads. Bernie Brillstein, my first manager, always told me, ‘Kid, just show up and wow them. Don’t talk about yourself.’ So, I didn’t. I just did.”

The on-camera Wayne impressed audiences on primetime, Broadway and daytime. And that was by design. “If you let other people take control of your narrative, that will put you out of work,” he says. “At some point, when people decide that they know your story or they’re finished with your story, they don’t need it. Tell them who you are.”

Maille says she wasn’t fazed when her father told her he was queer. “It was another Thursday,” she says.

Conversations about sexuality, however, “help me grow. I’m so fortunate to be able to have parents and a system where we can have those conversations very freely.”

Now, Brady says, he’s determined to present a truthful side to his life. “It is scary, especially since this has been my business since I was a kid. But if you don’t want to watch me because I identify as queer…then I don’t want you to watch me. If there are enough of those people that don’t need to watch me because of those reasons, then I’ll just do something else because the truth is more important.”

"Wayne Brady: The Family Remix" is now airing on Freeform.