‘Little House on the Prairie’ star Melissa Gilbert says show reflects what ‘people crave in life’
"Little House on the Prairie" star Melissa Gilbert shared her thoughts on the classic show's enduring popularity as it marks its 50th anniversary.
The 56-year-old actress rose to fame at the age of 9 when she landed the role of Laura Ingalls Wilder in "Little House on the Prairie," which ran for nine seasons from 1974 to 1983. During an interview with People magazine, Gilbert weighed in on why she believes the series still resonates with viewers today.
"It's a reflection of all the things that people crave in life: family, community, love, faith, and hope," she said at the show's 50th Anniversary Cast Reunion and Festival last weekend.
Gilbert continued, "It's all the good juicy things that make human beings so wonderful and different from animals. I mean, that connection. And 'Little House' is a reminder of that."
Loosely based on the real-life Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of novels, "Little House on the Prairie" followed the lives of the Ingalls family, which owned a small farm in the town of Walnut Grove, Minnestota, during the late 1800s.
Gilbert told People she noticed the show began attracting new viewers amid the COVID-19 pandemic as it served as "a reminder of where we used to be."
The "Dancing with the Stars" alum noted that fans on social media referenced specific episodes from "Little House" featuring storylines in which the characters struggled with outbreaks of disease in their community, including season one's "Plague" and season three's "Quarantine."
"At that time, I would look at numbers going up and reading things on social media and think, ‘Okay, well okay,’ and then it just started to blow up," Gilbert remembered.
"Then the Black Lives Matter movement happened, and then they're talking about episodes like ‘The Wisdom of Solomon,'" she continued, referring to an episode in the third season in which a young Black boy travels to Walnut Grove to pursue an education.
Gilbert pointed out that despite being a family-friendly period piece, "Little House on the Prairie" explored a number of social issues that are still relevant today.
"All of a sudden, people are realizing that there's a 'Little House on the Prairie' [episode] for everything we're going through," she said.
"It wasn't just that cozy family show," Gilbert continued. "We dealt with the issues of 1974, the recession, that's coming home from Vietnam, chauvinism, equal rights for women, equal rights for people of color, antisemitism. We dealt with all of that, but we didn't do it in an exploitive way."
"We were telling stories at the time, which sadly are still our stories," she added. "We're still fighting for so many things in this country, and I think ‘Little House’ is sort of a bastion of what can be."
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Last weekend, the surviving cast of "Little House on the Prairie" celebrated the show's milestone anniversary during a festival at the series' original filming location, Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, California.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, Alison Arngrim, who played mean girl Nellie Oleson, marveled over the show's lasting appeal.
"If you would have told us 50 years ago that this show would remain timeless, we would have thought you were crazy," she said.
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"We had no concept that this show would still be airing on television 50 years later," she shared. "We didn’t even know if there would still be TV in 50 years! We were stunned that this show became a hit."
However, she noted that Michael Landon, who served as the series' executive producer, director and writer, as well as starred as family patriarch Charles Ingalls, "always knew" that "Little House on the Prairie" would stand the test of time.
"He told Melissa Gilbert… ‘Long after we are all gone, they’ll still be watching this,’" she said of the actor, who died at age 54 from pancreatic cancer in 1991.
She continued, "And everyone he said it to shook their heads and smiled, nodded and went, ‘He’s crazy.' No one believed him. Everyone said, ‘Oh, isn’t that sweet? He clearly lost his mind.’ No one thought this thing would be going 50 years later… We are dumbfounded. We are thrilled. We’re so grateful."
"There’s a deep connection people have to the show, and it’s truly amazing," Arngrim noted. "It really has stood the test of time, just as Michael Landon predicted. When times get hard, there’s always ‘Little House on the Prairie.’"
Fox News Digital's Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this report.