Little House on the Prairie star Alison Arngrim got candid about what really went on behind the scenes of the hit ’70s TV show, which has recently been rebooted by Netflix.
Alison, who portrayed the villainous Nellie Oleson in the show from 1974 to 1982, shared on the Here’s What Happened podcast that many of the crew members had an “old Hollywood” mindset when it came to their behavior, even around the show’s child actors.
“They were older, which also meant…it was kind of like Mad Men, the three martini lunch,” she explained. “They came from an era where everybody smoked, and everybody drank, like all the time.”
“The children were not smoking, thank heavens. But Michael [Landon, the show’s creator and star] and the crew, and many actors were all puffing Marlboros all over the place,” she continued. The 64-year-old recalled that the crew would burn through “a couple of cases of beer” each day on set and would send someone to buy more if they ran out.
Alison claimed that Michael would “take a shot of whiskey” while filming his role as Charles ‘Pa’ Ingalls, and at the end of the work day the older cast and crew members would make their way to the makeshift bar on set and “start really drinking”.
The former child star also revealed that many of the actors’ managers would try and pit the young girls against each other, just like in the old Hollywood days.
© NBCUniversal via Getty Images“You take three little girls who are just becoming teenagers and lock them into a studio, and then you also have the whole Hollywood thing of being pitted against each other and competition,” Alison said.
Watch the Little House on the Prairie reboot trailer below…
“And all the managers and the agents and the stage parents going, ‘No, you’re prettier than her, you shouldn’t be friends with the other two!’ It is a miracle that we got along as well as we did, and yet we did, and we survived the whole seven years without killing each other.”
The beloved TV star delighted fans of the show when she appeared in the new reboot as Ida, a frontier woman who scares the main characters away after tricking them.
© Getty Images“I got a phone call: ‘What are you doing in a week and a half? Could you come to Winnipeg? There’s this character, we want it to be you,'” Alison recalled in an interview with Tudum.
© Netflix“Ida is basically a crazy lady in the woods. Sort of a forest drifter with drifter friends,” she continued. “They’re hanging out in the woods, having their little dinner, a little campfire in the forest, and the two poor unsuspecting Ingalls girls wander in, and we’re like, ‘Hi, come hang out with us.’ I thought, ‘Oh, that’s creepy as all get‑out. That sounds right up my alley. I’ll be right over!'”
Only Murders in the Building star Willa Dunn will take over Nellie’s role in season two of the reboot, with Alison sharing her delight over the casting announcement.
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