Christopher Knight says he was lied to when filming “Brady Bunch” scene with real spider: 'I was terrified'

In the season 4 Hawaii-set episode "Pass the Tabu," Peter Brady awakens in his bed to find a tarantula crawling up his body.

While the Brady Bunch kids famously had a lot of fun on set of the iconic sitcom, it wasn't all a barrel of laughs.

In the season 4 Hawaii-set episode "Pass the Tabu," Peter Brady (Christopher Knight) awakens in his bed to find a tarantula crawling up his body. During an appearance on Today on Thursday alongside costars Barry Williams and Eve Plumb, Knight recalled the producers lying to him about the very real spider used in the scene.

"They did lie to me. They told me that they put ball bearings on its fangs so that it couldn't inject [anything]," he told hosts Carson Daly and Hoda Kotb of the tarantula.

He added, "I was terrified, but I was a perfect kind of terrified because I got to prove my hero self to the ladies. I shouldn't let them know I'm scared to death."

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Coming to his on-screen brother's defense, Williams said, "And that was a real spider and he had nothing under it, it was on him. And then I came in and I had to figure out how to get it off of him."

When Daly joked that he just had to smash the spider, Williams said he was firmly against that and wanted to protect the arachnid instead. "I had a tarantula as a pet and I didn't want it to be hurt, so I was able to scoop it up and let it land," he said.

The cast of The Brady Bunch joined Today to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the television show. Williams, Plumb, and Knight were joined by Tina Trahan, who now owns the iconic Brady Bunch house, to discuss The Brady Experience, a new charity event to benefit No Kid Hungry where individuals who donate get the chance to have breakfast with the cast at the original home featured in the show.

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In honor of the anniversary, Kotb asked the stars if they thought there was space for such a show nowadays. "Absolutely," Williams replied. "The show was about how can people get along? And I think that's a universal sort of brand and very appropriate today."

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In fact, Williams said that, thanks to their podcast Real Brady Bros, he and Knight have seen younger fans find the show. "We hear a lot from our fans and some of them are quite young, and many of them know the details of the episodes better than we do," he said.

Watch the full clip with Williams, Knight, and Plumb above.