Melissa Gilbert was cast as Laura Ingalls when she was 9 years old. America saw it grow in Little House on the Prairie. They saw her fight the bullies, make friends, develop her first crush, and eventually fall in love and get married. But just because Laura suddenly became interested in romance, it doesn’t mean that Gilbert was. See why the actor “had a sick feeling [her] stomach that hasn’t gone away in the next two seasons ”whenever she saw“ Almanzo Wilder ”appear on the script.
Melissa Gilbert was not ready to grow when Laura Ingalls did in ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Gilbert knew Laura’s life trajectory – she had read the books. She knew that one day Laura would fall in love, get married and have a child. But these major changes in her character’s life happened much earlier than she expected.
“I was struggling with Laura’s more adult interests and desires,” wrote Gilbert in his memoirs, Prairie Tale. “The new sixth season featured a series of new characters, including Almanzo Wilder, the young man Laura would fall in love with, marry and start a family with.”
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Gilbert writes that the first day she saw Almanzo’s name in the script, she felt sick to her stomach. And she felt that way for the next two seasons.
“Nausea was just nervousness,” she wrote. “I knew I would have to show affection, kiss and, at some point, go to bed with a guy when in real life I was a fifteen year old teenager on flat knees who looked thirteen, still wearing rubber bands and a retainer on his mouth, and had never gone out, kissed or even held hands with a boy. ”
Melissa Gilbert’s first impression of Dean Butler, the actor who played Almanzo Wilder in ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Dean Butler was cast in the role of Almanzo Wilder. When the actors first met, Gilbert felt many things (none of which was positive).
“When we finally met, I was hit by a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger and nausea,” she wrote. “I can imagine what my face was like. No, I don’t want to imagine. It couldn’t have been good. “
Gilbert thought that his love interest would be closer to his age – “Instead, they had cast a man!”
“Dean was an adult man,” wrote Gilbert. “I looked at him as if he had left Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. He was in his twenties. He shaved, drove a car and lived in his own apartment. “
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And although Gilbert was disappointed in Butler, she imagines that he was also disappointed in her.
“He must have been so upset to meet this frightened and stupid fifteen-year-old with peach fluff on his legs (I hadn’t shaved yet), and to be told it was me he had to fall in love with. and get married, ”she wrote.
Gilbert and Butler may not have started in the best way, but today they are “great friends”.
“He knows that he scared me a lot and that, as a result, I made a point of doing everything possible to make him as uncomfortable as possible,” wrote Gilbert.