‘Little House on the Prairie’: Secrets From the Set Revealed by the Actors Who Grew Up on the Show

Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson, tells Closer, “We had a lot of kids on the set, which was good. I used to say they tried to take our childhoods, but Melissa Gilbert and I kept stealing them back, because we did whatever we wanted. We were always doing crazy things and pranking and carrying on.”

Adds Melissa, “As a child, it was the best game of dress-up anyone has ever played in the history of the world. But not just the costumes. I had actual high button shoes and I had to learn how to use a button hook to do them up. All of our costumes were authentic.”

Much of the show’s exteriors were filmed at Big Sky Ranch in California’s Simi Valley, where the crew built a realistic representation of the town of Walnut Grove, circa 1870. Melissa remembers, “We had wagons to ride in. There were horses, cattle, chickens and other kids to play with and we were outside a ton. It was a really great place to grow up as a professional child. Again, I was working with all of these very serious adult actors who considered me their peer. Not a lot of condescending, not a lot of patting on the head. I mean, when I had moments, when I was an upset little girl about something, everybody stepped in to make me feel better, but it was only always about something personal and never anything professional.”

Although their characters were usually at odds on Little House, Melissa and Alison became close friends. Recalls Alison, “We were always having slumber parties and doing crazy things. We liked to go out in public and get recognized and freak people out.”

Rachel Lindsay Greenbush, who shared the role of Carrie Ingalls with her twin sister, Sidney, from age 2, also felt a close connection with the other Little House kids. “Melissa used to come and read books to us,” she points out in an exclusive interview. “You’ll notice in a lot of scenes she’ll take our hands. She was very much an older sister.”

Alison states that she really does miss hanging out with the Little House people. “I miss going in with the sun coming up,” she says, “and the smell of the overly strong coffee and donuts. Going into the mill office, because they had a tub of Chasen’s chili with chopped onions and grated cheese. Running up to be first for lunch, because then you you’d get fudgsicles. The atmosphere on the set and the hanging out with people. It was kind of fabulous.”

As previously noted, Michael was at the head of this Hollywood family. “Everyone sees him as the father figure or this romantic macho man, but he would laugh like a girl,” confides Alison. “You could hear him for miles.”

Adds Melissa, “He got me to open up to him on my audition and asked me to tell him stories and I read a scene with him and made him laugh. And he had this incredibly infectious laugh. I just felt instantly safe and comfortable and ready to work with him at a moment’s notice.”

On the set, Michael encouraged hard work and having fun. “He had this absolute taskmaster work ethic, but then he’d be playing practical jokes,” notes Alison. “So one minute it’s, like, ‘We are going to do this on time. We are going to do this ahead of schedule. We’re going to do this many pages a day. Do you know your lines? Do you know what you’re doing? Chop, chop, let’s go. Get it in one take.” The next minute it’s, ‘Pull my finger.’”

The kids used to delight in bringing him frogs they caught in the pond. Remembers Rachel, “He would put the frog in his mouth and walk up to, say Mary, the script lady. He’d make these big eyes and let that frog jump out!”

Michael, who passed away in 1991, was also generous about sharing his time and experience with the kids. “He’d let you sit behind the camera,” Rachel recalls. “He’d let you explore what it was like to block a scene or direct a scene. I didn’t realize at the time what a unique opportunity that was.”

For Melissa, the connection she’d made with Michael became part of her personal life as well. “Our relationship was very close on camera and off camera,” she says warmly. “My family and his family socialized together. When I went back to regular school, his kids — Leslie and Michael, Jr. — were there. Michael, Jr. was my prom date. We vacationed together in Hawaii every spring. My parents would go out with the Landons on New Year’s and we would spend the night either at their house or our house. And I don’t know if he intentionally did this, but when my father passed away, when I was 11, while we were doing the show, I really looked to him as a father figure and he never let me down. He was a wonderful mentor and a really wonderful guide and friend, both professionally and personally. So much so that my youngest son is named Michael after him.”

Anyone wanting to learn about all things Little House, it’s recommended you check out American Masters: Laura Ingalls Wilder when it premieres this December. “I think it’s long overdue,” says Melissa, who is proud to have been a part of telling Laura’s story and is one of the many interviewees in the documentary. “Growing up in the Little House family far out-weighed anything else I could have been doing.”

And her fascination for that world continues. Notes Melissa, “Over these last 45 years or more, since I first played her, I’ve done such deep dives into her and her ancestors and her daughter, Rose, and the people that Rose influenced in the larger political spectrum of where we are now in America. So it’s going to be really fun to see what I don’t know. I know the crew and the group of people who did this documentary have gotten footage and traveled for so long. I think this is the ultimate story and the ultimate documentary. I’m so excited that this has finally happened.”

PBS describes the documentary as follows: “American Masters enters the world of the Little House books and its unlikely author, a Midwestern farm woman who published her first novel at the age of 65, transforming her frontier experience into a best-selling series. While she emphasized real life and history and celebrated the simple and stoic, she omitted the grimmer and contradictory details of her personal history: grinding poverty, government assistance, death and deprivation. Wilder’s racist portrayal of American Indians and Black people in her books has made her less appealing to some contemporary readers, teachers and librarians, yet a rabid fanbase exists across generations. The documentary draws on never-before-published letters, interviews with Wilder experts, fresh perspectives from readers and writers, and never-before-seen photographs and family artifacts to explore the context in which she lived and wrote, as well as the true nature of her personality.

Reporting by Louise A. Barile and Lexi Ciccone

For more on this story and others, pick up the latest issue of Closer magazine, on newsstands now!