Speaker 1: Hello, Emily, Hello Glennis.
Speaker 2: We're back. We're back.
Speaker 1: Happy fall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny to be talking for Wilder in the
Speaker 3: Fall because it's not a road trip season anymore. It's like,
Speaker 3: but it is sit in your room, listen to podcasts,
Speaker 3: and I'll then maybe watch Little House on the Prairie
Speaker 3: on your TV season.
Speaker 1: It's definitely cozy season.
Speaker 4: I was just thinking, it's a little over a year
Speaker 4: ago that we drove to Mansfield, Missouri for the Wilder
Speaker 4: Days Festival.
Speaker 1: That's true. A year since you heard pause Fiddle and
Speaker 1: your life was changed.
Speaker 4: A year since I heard pause Fiddle, and we then
Speaker 4: subsequently went to Graceland.
Speaker 1: Made our pilgrimages. So we're dropping a.
Speaker 4: Surprise bonus episode because someone in the comments somewhere, maybe
Speaker 4: more than one person actually, in various forms of request,
Speaker 4: asked us to all cap release all the interviews, which
Speaker 4: I think is a solid request because we did so
Speaker 4: many amazing interviews for the podcast that we have like
Speaker 4: a wealth of bonus material. And this interview we did
Speaker 4: with Alison Arngrim, who is the actress obviously who played
Speaker 4: Nellie Olsen in the television show, was I think one
Speaker 4: of our first interviews wasn't it.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was kind of right after we got back from
Speaker 3: that Mansfield road trip, which was our last trip, and
Speaker 3: we were starting to put all of our tape together
Speaker 3: and start collecting all the extra interviews we needed, and we.
Speaker 1: Started thinking about the TV show.
Speaker 3: Allison's name had come up at so many of the
Speaker 3: sites that we knew that she was the first person
Speaker 3: we had to talk to.
Speaker 1: People loved her at every one of the houses.
Speaker 4: Everyone who'd worked with her, everyone who'd met her raved
Speaker 4: about her, which I'm not surprised by. But she was
Speaker 4: just a delightful interview. We could have talked to her forever.
Speaker 4: I would just say, when we conducted these interviews, it
Speaker 4: wasn't with the idea that the full interview would be aired.
Speaker 4: So they are, while wonderful, you're getting a rough You're
Speaker 4: getting a rough, behind the scenes cut, which does not
Speaker 4: diminish from the intelligence or charm or insight that Allison
Speaker 4: brings to.
Speaker 3: This And something audience should also know going into this
Speaker 3: is most of the cast of Little House. I've written memoirs,
Speaker 3: Allison's memoir Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. Is am I
Speaker 3: going to offend everyone by saying it's the best one.
Speaker 3: It's very very good. It's very good about her and
Speaker 3: about her time on Little House and tells you a
Speaker 3: lot of things you wouldn't otherwise know.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely, it's so personal, it's so gripping, it's so funny,
Speaker 4: and it's really intense. She talks about the sexual abuse
Speaker 4: she suffered from a family member, and so keep that
Speaker 4: in mind if you're listening to this. We do touch
Speaker 4: on that in the interview, and if you haven't read
Speaker 4: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, I would highly recommend listening
Speaker 4: to the audiobook because she reads it and it really
Speaker 4: is I think, I say at the beginning of this interview,
Speaker 4: and when we first spoke to her, I had just
Speaker 4: finished listening to it and felt like I'd been with her,
Speaker 4: Like it's so wonderfully done, and she's so wonderful and
Speaker 4: had so much to say, not just about the television show,
Speaker 4: but also about lour Ingles Wilder and her legacy and
Speaker 4: the real life version, which if you've listened to the
Speaker 4: podcast you've heard some of her insights on that.
Speaker 1: But again, this is the full deep cut.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we hope you enjoy it, and we've gotten a
Speaker 3: lot of messages from all of you about who you'd
Speaker 3: want to hear from, so maybe we'll do more of this.
Speaker 4: Everyone has gone off to new projects, but hopefully we'll
Speaker 4: be able to keep releasing these every month or so
Speaker 4: because we definitely have plenty of amazing material from so
Speaker 4: many amazing, generous people.
Speaker 2: So thanks for.
Speaker 4: Listening, and thank you everyone for your feedback and the
Speaker 4: reviews you're leaving on Apple's. We're very grateful and continue
Speaker 4: to be very proud of this podcast.
Speaker 5: So proud, so happy with it, excited to bring you
Speaker 5: guys more, and we hope you entrew the episode.
Speaker 6: Okay, Alison, I'm Glynnis.
Speaker 2: Hey Glennis.
Speaker 6: I'm so it thrills that you're hearing over the Moon.
Speaker 6: I was re listening to your book. I was listening
Speaker 6: to the audio version, so I feel like I've been
Speaker 6: living with you.
Speaker 2: Oh do you like it?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: My god, because it's like when I wrote it, people
Speaker 2: read it and said like, wow, it's like I can
Speaker 2: hear you in my head.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: I hope you're doing the audiobook. I know I did
Speaker 2: the audio book the way. Yep, that's exactly what I
Speaker 2: thought it would sound.
Speaker 6: I'm sure you hear this all the time. It was
Speaker 6: like tapped into some childhood part of my brain that
Speaker 6: had such a strong relationship with the show that it
Speaker 6: was both like eight year old me was listening to
Speaker 6: it and present day me was listening to it at
Speaker 6: the same time, and it was really powerful. I am
Speaker 6: fascinated by so much about you, and also obviously about
Speaker 6: your relationship to the show. But just to start, can
Speaker 6: you briefly walk through your origin backstory and how you
Speaker 6: came to acting and how you came to Little House.
Speaker 2: Well, I am a crazy ex child star. My whole
Speaker 2: family were in show business. I mean literally even my
Speaker 2: aunt and uncle. My aunt was a soprano, my uncle
Speaker 2: played the violin. My mother was the voice of Gasper
Speaker 2: the Friendly Ghost. My father was managing Liberaci. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: So everyone's in show business. So I started working when
Speaker 2: I was about five six years old, commercials, little shows.
Speaker 2: I did a movie when I was ten, And the
Speaker 2: funny part is after I did the movie, I wasn't
Speaker 2: working a lot, and my father's a manager, sat me
Speaker 2: down and said, you know, you may never work again,
Speaker 2: or you may not work to you're an adult, or
Speaker 2: you might never work again at all. We don't know.
Speaker 2: And then like six months later I got little huse
Speaker 2: than pre I read for the part of Laura. I
Speaker 2: read for the part of Mary. Laura Ingles was like
Speaker 2: the search for Scarlett O'Hara for eight year olds. I
Speaker 2: mean everyone the world, right, But of course Melissa go
Speaker 2: nailed it. So I come back and there's this part
Speaker 2: of Nellioles. I had not read the books. I did
Speaker 2: not read the books till after I got the show,
Speaker 2: so I was clueless. And I come in and I
Speaker 2: see this Nelliolson character and I start reading this and
Speaker 2: that's when I turned to my father. It's like this girl,
Speaker 2: said total then and I read it for him and
Speaker 2: he started laughing. He said, don't change it. Please put
Speaker 2: the pages down, don't look at him. Go in and
Speaker 2: read it exactly like that. And I did. And there
Speaker 2: was Michael Landon, Kat mcgrae and the producers and I
Speaker 2: read it and they laughed hysterically, and then they said
Speaker 2: to do that one part again and a goodly child actor.
Speaker 2: I said, yes, what do you want me to change
Speaker 2: and they said nothing. Has read the thing about the
Speaker 2: house again because the my home speech from the episode
Speaker 2: Country Girls, and I read it again, and they laughed
Speaker 2: their heads off and I was hired immediately. Which is
Speaker 2: that a compliment to my acting or does that say
Speaker 2: something about my personality? I have no idea.
Speaker 6: It's amazing to me when you said the my Home speech.
Speaker 6: I haven't seen that episode in years, and I know
Speaker 6: precisely what you were talking about, right.
Speaker 2: It's in your head, yeah, because it's like the best thing.
Speaker 2: There's this one joke in my Home Speech. I do
Speaker 2: not know that every eleven year old got the joke.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's because I got the joke and I played
Speaker 2: it for that. We have three sets of dishes, one
Speaker 2: for every day, one for Sunday, and one for when
Speaker 2: someone very special and important comes to visit, which we
Speaker 2: have never even used yet. Hi, you live in Walda Grove,
Speaker 2: The Queen ain't coming. You don't know.
Speaker 6: Anybody Aspirational dishes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. And this leads into,
Speaker 6: I think a much broader question. I'm sure you get
Speaker 6: asked a lot, but why do you think the show
Speaker 6: still resonates? I mean, it's on television right now. I
Speaker 6: think it keeps the Hallmark Channel in business. It's on
Speaker 6: TV around the world. Why is that.
Speaker 2: Okay, you have to say. I mean I literally wake
Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night and go, somebody
Speaker 2: somewhere is watching us the very right now. It's literally
Speaker 2: because it's in every country on Earth. It's been dubbed
Speaker 2: into every language. There's DVDs in every language. It's bananas,
Speaker 2: and I've met people from like every country on Earth
Speaker 2: who are like, oh, yeah, I've seen every episode. Was
Speaker 2: that the guy near Sri Lanka they only got little
Speaker 2: house in the prairie and lost in space. I said,
Speaker 2: how confused about America? Were you? I've been asked this
Speaker 2: about a million times that we've tried to figure it out,
Speaker 2: and all of us from the show like why why.
Speaker 2: I think that the problems of the Ingles are universal.
Speaker 2: The majority of people on Earth don't actually have very
Speaker 2: much money, and the Ingles live in like a two
Speaker 2: room house with a whole bunch of kids and worry
Speaker 2: if they're going to make it through the week. That's
Speaker 2: really how probably eighty ninety percent of humans on the
Speaker 2: planet are living in a tidy place with a lot
Speaker 2: of children, wondering if they'll have enough to eat. And
Speaker 2: this is how people, real people are living. And there's
Speaker 2: a rich family in town at the store who give
Speaker 2: them a hard time, and there's always a crop failure
Speaker 2: or a blizzard or locusts, and they cling together and
Speaker 2: make it through. That's reality. Did Dallas, The Dynasty, the
Speaker 2: Fabulous shows were was it friends? With these people like
Speaker 2: have no jobs and have three bedroom apartments in New York?
Speaker 2: That doesn't really happen for maybe a tiny segment of humanity,
Speaker 2: whereas little house people tune in and go, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: pretty much it. When you look at the fact that
Speaker 2: the books got published at the height of the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: so people were like, oh, it was worse for the Ingles.
Speaker 2: No matter how bad things are the Depression, the Ingles
Speaker 2: have it worse and they're muddling through because there was
Speaker 2: a recession in the eighteen seventies when that took place,
Speaker 2: America was having recession and people were having a terrible time.
Speaker 2: So then the books come out in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: and when does the show come out seventy four? Remember
Speaker 2: whip inflation now in gas rationing, and you could buy
Speaker 2: meat like every other day, whatever the heck that it
Speaker 2: was a mess. We were having a terrible recession and
Speaker 2: suddenly here's Charles Ingles saying the slate pencils up to
Speaker 2: two pennies? Oh man, what are we going to do? Genius?
Speaker 2: And here we are get When did the show like
Speaker 2: explode in popularity again for the eight thousandth time? The pandemic.
Speaker 2: We have an episode called plague, and an episode called
Speaker 2: quarantine the anthrax, and all of us in the show
Speaker 2: we're hearing from people on Facebook and email. It going.
Speaker 2: I had no idea it was a huge connection with
Speaker 2: the pandemic because people were home and they were frightened,
Speaker 2: and they said, I need something familiar, and here it was,
Speaker 2: and here were the Kles dealing with terrible and curable diseases.
Speaker 2: So I think it's that these are the problems that
Speaker 2: people really deal with. And it's a very emotional show.
Speaker 2: So I always joke about how the French love it
Speaker 2: because Charles' Ingkles he cries beautiful. It's an emotional show.
Speaker 2: It taps right into that and people act like it's real.
Speaker 2: It's really intense.
Speaker 6: I was really struck by your anecdote in the book
Speaker 6: about being at a school function with Catherine McGregor and
Speaker 6: someone coming up behind you and kicking you and then
Speaker 6: you're opening anecdote about being at a fanfare and someone
Speaker 6: walking up who it sounded like they're about my agent
Speaker 6: saying I forgive you, and the intensity of it. Guess
Speaker 6: the intensity of that connection must be overwhelming.
Speaker 2: It's it's mind blowing. I mean, we get the people
Speaker 2: who come for autographs and sometimes they cry because it's
Speaker 2: so intense to meet the person that you've grown up watching.
Speaker 2: I was just a Knoxville, Tennessee use Fanboy convention and
Speaker 2: it was Melissa Gilbert, Karen Grassley, and me, So you
Speaker 2: can imagine how bananas people went and these were up
Speaker 2: on these huge things and the line comes up today
Speaker 2: and so people come on and they say, yes, you
Speaker 2: come around, get a picture. And we've had this before,
Speaker 2: Like I remember my husband Bob was with me during
Speaker 2: one thing where we'd have people start shaking and I'd
Speaker 2: go put my armor on from the photo and they
Speaker 2: burst into tears. We'd have to get them together, like
Speaker 2: wait a minute for them. So we had criers and
Speaker 2: they all cried. Of course when they saw maw Karen.
Speaker 2: They all cried at Karen's table. I had Kleenex at
Speaker 2: my table because we're getting criers and I of course
Speaker 2: could tease them and make to get them laughing, because
Speaker 2: they'd come up and I go, uh uh, what's how
Speaker 2: many is this? You are a number four? You are
Speaker 2: the fourth crier of the morning.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: I was like, how well we got Kleenex?
Speaker 3: Come on?
Speaker 2: Do you think? And so yeah, we talked about how
Speaker 2: many criers we got in to day.
Speaker 6: Who gets the strongest reaction from the fans? Do you think?
Speaker 2: I know Melissa Gilbert. Obviously it's Laura. She'd people just
Speaker 2: go into a coma at the site. He's like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, Laura. They just like flip out completely. A
Speaker 2: lot of people don't think they're gonna be emotional. Then
Speaker 2: they meet Ma and that voice and she sounds the same,
Speaker 2: and she's so sweet. It's her. I've seen people really
Speaker 2: lose it over Charlotte Stewart, Miss Beatle. We were at
Speaker 2: an event and they're getting autographed. Charlotte's practically doing therapy.
Speaker 2: I'm signing autographs. They turn around and she's holding this
Speaker 2: guy's hand, going yes, I understand. He's like sobbing, hysterical.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what is going on over there? She's like
Speaker 2: it's like out of control. And then it's weird because
Speaker 2: you know, she was in David Lynch's eraser Head and
Speaker 2: on Twin Peaks and she was in Trimmers. So we
Speaker 2: had all the horror people and like the Twin Peaks
Speaker 2: people coming and the Little House people. It was like crazy.
Speaker 2: I get obviously an extremely strong reaction. I get a
Speaker 2: very different reaction. We all have our own like different ones.
Speaker 2: And the women who are still in love with Almonzo,
Speaker 2: poor Dean Butler, he blushes, you know, he blushes. The
Speaker 2: women come up and go he's still so handsome and
Speaker 2: he's like like going breat red. So they're still in
Speaker 2: love with him. So that's the whole world.
Speaker 6: That kind of ties into something I found really powerful
Speaker 6: about the book. And you're writing about your upbringing and
Speaker 6: the abuse at the hands of your brother, and I
Speaker 6: was born in seventy four, the year Little House came out,
Speaker 6: and so when you were writing about how in your
Speaker 6: childhood the absent sort of ABC after school specials or
Speaker 6: a language around traumatic experiences with children, I was really
Speaker 6: struck by how in the show you were doing some
Speaker 6: of the craziest storylines in Little House that I think
Speaker 6: people mock about. You know, it really goes what feels
Speaker 6: like a little off the rails in terms of narrative
Speaker 6: from time to time. But I was listening to your book,
Speaker 6: I thought, oh, but in those episodes, it is really providing,
Speaker 6: you know, an experience for kids who might not have
Speaker 6: seen those experiences anywhere else on TV. Did that ever
Speaker 6: strike you as sort of an amazing thing that you're
Speaker 6: participating in a show that was sort of providing a
Speaker 6: language or an experience for kids that wouldn't have otherwise
Speaker 6: had access to it.
Speaker 2: Well, we did cover everything. Remember, it was so weird because, okay,
Speaker 2: we're doing the eighteen hundreds, we're doing law, but it's
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and the Norman Leer shows are on,
Speaker 2: and there's all this cutting edge television talking about racism, sexism,
Speaker 2: the women's movement, the drug problem, all this stuff is happening.
Speaker 2: So we're actually technically doing it, but because it's the
Speaker 2: eighteen seventies, it's going like whoosh over the heads of
Speaker 2: anyone who would object, and other people are going, yes,
Speaker 2: thank god they're covering. Is the Civil War soldier who
Speaker 2: comes back and he has PTSD or shell shock should
Speaker 2: be there and he's a to morphine This is the
Speaker 2: same year when Vietnam veterans were coming home addicted to heroin,
Speaker 2: and here we have a Civil War soldier with the morphine.
Speaker 2: They did like, hello, how many people were living that episode?
Speaker 2: The poor, the mother. So we were doing these episodes,
Speaker 2: the women want the right to own property. We did
Speaker 2: all these episodes. We had episodes about alcoholism, about drugs.
Speaker 2: Even Albert, the teenage on morphine became a drug. The
Speaker 2: good boy from the Good family going out on drugs.
Speaker 2: This is what people were experiencing. We were showing all
Speaker 2: of these things. We had child abuse, we had special abuse,
Speaker 2: and of course the Sylvia episode, or as people do
Speaker 2: refer to it, clown rape.
Speaker 6: I'm not laughing because it's funny, but that is the
Speaker 6: way people refer to it.
Speaker 2: It's horrified. It's a very very disturbing episode, but again
Speaker 2: a real thing that happens, and happened in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Because people will say, oh, back in those days, well
Speaker 2: back in those days, all the same things happened and
Speaker 2: things were terrible too. People dealt with it. And that's
Speaker 2: why when you read like Pioneer Girl Laura's real autobiography
Speaker 2: and see the little stories that they said, maybe not
Speaker 2: put that in banks a Plump Creek. The things that
Speaker 2: didn't make it into the children's books, you go, whoa, yikes.
Speaker 2: And of course she was dealing with the same kind
Speaker 2: of harassment and the threat of molestation and terrible things
Speaker 2: happening around her. And so that's real life. We did
Speaker 2: work all those things out, and a lot of things
Speaker 2: that were covered on nineteen seventy shows like Family or
Speaker 2: All in the Family or Maud we were sneaking them
Speaker 2: in too, but everybody was in bonnets, so it was
Speaker 2: somehow safe and okay, And of course Paul and ma
Speaker 2: were there to help you deal with it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the line you said, I think something along lines
Speaker 6: of Michael Lannon fleshed out characters that Laura only implied
Speaker 6: in the book when you read Prairie Frizer, as you say,
Speaker 6: pioneer Girl, this idea that she couldn't look some of
Speaker 6: her traumatic experiences in the face, and the show was
Speaker 6: able to depict them.
Speaker 2: The books, the Engles don't have a son, and there's
Speaker 2: no baby who dies. That doesn't happen in the books.
Speaker 2: It happens in the show, but it happened in real life.
Speaker 2: But the family was so traumatized by the death of
Speaker 2: the little boy that they did not talk about it.
Speaker 2: So all this stuff in the books is like whoa.
Speaker 2: So then when they complain on the show, like, well,
Speaker 2: on the show, will you change this? Have you read
Speaker 2: the books? The timelines are different, and then when you
Speaker 2: read the real timelines and the stuff she really went
Speaker 2: through the ad sor but yeah, they could not bring
Speaker 2: themselves to talk about the poor child, so she didn't
Speaker 2: do that in the books, never spoke of it. And
Speaker 2: then in the TV show, of course Michael said, what,
Speaker 2: that's like the greatest episode ever. Of course we're going
Speaker 2: to do that. And then of course Laura runs away
Speaker 2: to a mountain. How she found a mountain in Minnesota?
Speaker 2: I always say she ran across four states to like
Speaker 2: Colorado or something. I don't know. She finds a big
Speaker 2: mountain at that and then at the top of the
Speaker 2: mountain is Ernest bourg Dye, who is apparently gone. And
Speaker 2: that was my And it's one of the greatest episodes
Speaker 2: ever made. It's one of the favorite episodes. It's Melissa's
Speaker 2: favorite apps. It is one of the best episodes ever
Speaker 2: of like Anything, and it is genius, and it totally works.
Speaker 6: That is always been my favorite episode. I watched it
Speaker 6: not long ago, so remind me of my shepherd, the
Speaker 6: Lord's Ice Shepherd. I would pay for a Little House
Speaker 6: series of you doing the voiceover of like verbally annotating
Speaker 6: the entire series as we go. Speaking of the books,
Speaker 6: which you clearly you know are very knowledgeable about. When
Speaker 6: did you come to the book?
Speaker 2: Well, all of a sudden, show did the I guess
Speaker 2: i'd better get the book where Charlotte said she got
Speaker 2: a book at a rummage sale and I think it
Speaker 2: was like The Long Winter, one of the really hard ones.
Speaker 2: She said, I started reading this book and like, by
Speaker 2: page three, Mary is blind and the dog dies. I said,
Speaker 2: I said, what am I reading? This is awful? But
Speaker 2: what yes, what happened? And then like years later, I
Speaker 2: remember going back and rereading Plumb Creek in the first
Speaker 2: onood Little House in the Big Woods, going oh, okay,
Speaker 2: these are pretty good. And then of course the pandemic
Speaker 2: hit and I said, I haven't read those things in years,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, I'm hab at home. Everything I
Speaker 2: was doing was canceled, like, okay, I'm here for the duration.
Speaker 2: Clearly I need to do something interesting and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: go back, I have time. I'll go read the Little
Speaker 2: House Books. And I had just taken a workshop where
Speaker 2: this great acting teacher said, you know, people don't read
Speaker 2: aloud enough at home. It's really good diction and training,
Speaker 2: he said, But as an actor, he said, next thing,
Speaker 2: you're sitting around the house, read a magazine out loud,
Speaker 2: read to the cat. It's really good for you. And
Speaker 2: then I went, everyone else is bored out of their minds.
Speaker 2: I'll go on Facebook live and we'll all read them.
Speaker 2: So I put on a bonnet, gone on Facebook and say, okay, guys,
Speaker 2: the woman wrote nine books, and I will read them all,
Speaker 2: starting with book one page for we can keep this
Speaker 2: going as long as it takes. And I read the
Speaker 2: Little House Books every freaking day. I read all nine books.
Speaker 2: I read books about Laura, other books by Laura books,
Speaker 2: all of Roses stuff, all the Bill Anderson stuff about Laura,
Speaker 2: the history. I actually read Pioneer Girl with the footnotes live.
Speaker 2: That took a while. I did Little House in the
Speaker 2: Ozarks Laura Ingles articles that she wrote for like the
Speaker 2: Missouri Rules the Papers. That was really fascinating because it's
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen through like nineteen twenty one. So she's talking about, oh,
Speaker 2: the Spanish flu pandemic and World War One and women
Speaker 2: getting the vote. It's like, what that mind blowed? So
Speaker 2: we're reading that. A few cast members read stepped in
Speaker 2: and read Dean Butler Corset. I got to do The
Speaker 2: Long Winter. It's like Almonzo saves the town. It's my book.
Speaker 2: So he read The Long Winter. And I completed six
Speaker 2: hundred readings, and then I read the Little Books again.
Speaker 2: So I read them twice, you know, And we just
Speaker 2: finished recently six hundred, six hundred readings, and I said, guys,
Speaker 2: I'm taking a break at six hundred. I'll be back,
Speaker 2: but I think six hundred we can have a stop point.
Speaker 2: But a lot of people said it really got them
Speaker 2: through the pandemic. I got a commemorative thing from my
Speaker 2: local senator for raising morale during the pandemic. Exploring the
Speaker 2: works of lower Ingle's Wilder, increasing literacy rates, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 6: Was it intense for you to be reading these books
Speaker 6: by a woman who's act of her writing her life
Speaker 6: down has such a huge impact on your life. I mean,
Speaker 6: you are part of her legacy, and she is so
Speaker 6: much of your history. It's I wonder what that experience
Speaker 6: was like or if that occurred to you while you
Speaker 6: were doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always tas. I mean, well, you know, I've
Speaker 2: been to Nelly's grave because you know, there were three
Speaker 2: different people that made up Nellie Olsen. There's Nelly Owens
Speaker 2: who's buried in Tillamookork, and I say, I've been to
Speaker 2: my grave. It's Nellie Owen's curry. It's like, really weird.
Speaker 2: I was like, thank you, thank you for being a
Speaker 2: bitch so I could have a career. Oh so that
Speaker 2: was so weird. But then Genevieve's Masters and Stella Gilbert
Speaker 2: later were all kind of It took three people to
Speaker 2: be as mean as me. So it's very bizarre. And
Speaker 2: the pressure, I mean, it's something Melissa's talked about. We've
Speaker 2: talked about the massive psychic weight and pressure that Melissa
Speaker 2: Gilbert has had to live with being Laura Ingalls that
Speaker 2: her brains have not just run out her ears. I
Speaker 2: don't know how she stood it to these in and
Speaker 2: it was very hard for she didn't visit the sites
Speaker 2: for a really long time. So yeah, it's been really
Speaker 2: heavy for and it is weird for me to read
Speaker 2: these books and then especially then reading like the stuff
Speaker 2: with the real stories, the behind the scenes stories, that
Speaker 2: this really happened to this woman and she wrote this
Speaker 2: stuff and then it blew up, which she couldn't believe.
Speaker 2: And then that's a TV show she never anticipated, and
Speaker 2: that and that the TV show Blake. You know, a
Speaker 2: lot of shows came out in nineteen seventy four. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of things on TV actually in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies that were really huge. That aren't she reruns
Speaker 2: her out on DVD and people are not watching now
Speaker 2: that were huge at the time, and now it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was on, but Little House in the Prairie is
Speaker 2: what in the heck? So it's really weird for all
Speaker 2: of us. But yes, that's why when I read the
Speaker 2: k and then now having read them aloud twice, it
Speaker 2: was surreal. But yeah, there is this whole weird connection,
Speaker 2: that's why. And I've always been I like history. I've
Speaker 2: always been fasctated with history. So then to be tied
Speaker 2: into history in this really weird way and learn everything
Speaker 2: I could learn about the real Nelly and genevieven Stella.
Speaker 2: So for all of a sudden, she'd know we were
Speaker 2: playing people who lived.
Speaker 6: I imagine you get this from fans. It's this nice
Speaker 6: comforting thing to know that many of you are still
Speaker 6: in touch with each other and reading about you, in
Speaker 6: particular describing the set, which at least felt to me
Speaker 6: like it became a safe space for you and your
Speaker 6: friendship with Melissa Gilbert, and your impression of her was wonderful.
Speaker 6: I mean, your impressions are wonderful. They're really you can
Speaker 6: hear it.
Speaker 2: So she told me when she, I said, her early
Speaker 2: copy of the book, because she gave me a blurb,
Speaker 2: but everything she said when she read, what would I say,
Speaker 2: she could fit in my person sure way out or
Speaker 2: she had to. She said she had to put the
Speaker 2: book down because she went. She said she'd like completely
Speaker 2: lost in gafad like almost peg. She was like, guess that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was just like accurate.
Speaker 6: The thing I have to say I loved the most
Speaker 6: was and I know you get asked all the time
Speaker 6: about Michael Landon, who I obviously want to talk about
Speaker 6: in a minute, but I thought it was really wonderful
Speaker 6: when you said you didn't know if he loved you,
Speaker 6: but he respected you Oh my god, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 6: say that, you know, none of you are in jail
Speaker 6: or convicted. And even when you talk now about the
Speaker 6: psychic weight of carrying these characters and the success of
Speaker 6: this show attributing it that and how you shared dressing rooms,
Speaker 6: but everyone shared dressing rooms and you were expected to
Speaker 6: be on time, the manner with which you described this
Speaker 6: whole experience feels that it was not just positive but
Speaker 6: sort of strengthening.
Speaker 2: Well, god, yeah, it was incredible, because okay, when when
Speaker 2: you're a teenager, things like getting up early in the
Speaker 2: morning and having dis linna not so much. And when
Speaker 2: you're a teenager you have all this angst and anger
Speaker 2: and you don't want to be told what to do.
Speaker 2: And then in my case, having lived through abuse and bullying,
Speaker 2: there's all this rage. I mean, that's the biggest problem
Speaker 2: for people who are traumatized where physically or sexually abused,
Speaker 2: is what do you do with all this anger is
Speaker 2: just sitting there eating you up, and you got to
Speaker 2: dump it somewhere. And so here I am on this
Speaker 2: show where people quite nice to me, and I feel
Speaker 2: quite safe, and I have this character who can scream
Speaker 2: and go ye hey, and like let stuff out, which
Speaker 2: is like, oh my god, that felt so good. So
Speaker 2: that was incredible. But whatever was going on in my
Speaker 2: life at the time as a crazy teenager, and whereas
Speaker 2: other crazy teenagers might have on the weekend said hey,
Speaker 2: let's do drugs or you know, because you know, I
Speaker 2: was really into punk rock and going to the bands
Speaker 2: and everything, I probably would have cut my hair short
Speaker 2: dye of green and gotten at least one piercing somewhere
Speaker 2: in my face. But I was like, ah, I gotta
Speaker 2: be worked on money day. So there was always like,
Speaker 2: gotta go to work, man, whatever insane ideas I might
Speaker 2: have had or crazy things are going on, yes, but
Speaker 2: we're going to work on Monday. I gotta be at
Speaker 2: the SID so I gotta go to bed. Now, you
Speaker 2: guys party, I gotta go because I gotta go to
Speaker 2: bed because I gotta get up at like four in
Speaker 2: the morning. And there was a structure and I knew
Speaker 2: I was going to see these people, and I knew
Speaker 2: what was going to happen, and I knew there's going
Speaker 2: to be there and I had a job, and it
Speaker 2: was like, yes, you are performing a function that is
Speaker 2: needed that people need you to do. And you have responsibility.
Speaker 2: It was an enormous amount of responsibility. And I said,
Speaker 2: poor Melissa, she's like, you know, nine, carrying the show.
Speaker 2: She's responsible for the employment of like four hundred people.
Speaker 2: That was kind of a lot of pressure. But we
Speaker 2: were all held responsible that we needed to do our job.
Speaker 2: And I also had the marvelous advantage of you know,
Speaker 2: I got paid, which is like, yeah, of course, But
Speaker 2: a lot of teenage, a lot of child actors the money.
Speaker 2: They never saw their money. There were even a few
Speaker 2: kids on the show where the parents were whovered that money.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to have a trust fund, so I had
Speaker 2: a checking account at thirteen, So I was responsible. I
Speaker 2: had a job. I got paid to do my job.
Speaker 2: I saw the money from the job, and I also
Speaker 2: saw all the expenses related to the job. So there
Speaker 2: was a level of adult responsibility and learning about money
Speaker 2: and business, and learning about show business and learning about
Speaker 2: what goes on on a set and how to deal
Speaker 2: with office politics.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and a lot of adult behavior. I mean, you
Speaker 6: describe a complicated world in which you both feel very
Speaker 6: safe but are exposed to a lot of adult behavior,
Speaker 6: and that you write and have spoken about how close
Speaker 6: you and Alyssa Gilbert are and yet you're playing foes
Speaker 6: on screen. Was that ever confusing as a kid or
Speaker 6: was it fun?
Speaker 2: Oh? It was so much fun. Well, I said the books.
Speaker 2: At one point it was like, you know, therapy with
Speaker 2: Pataca bats, you know, you get out all the hostilities.
Speaker 2: We thought it was so funny because you bonded right away.
Speaker 2: And then the idea that regularly every few episodes we'd
Speaker 2: hit each other in the face was like, it's like awesome,
Speaker 2: And it was funny because like the very first fight scene,
Speaker 2: they were very careful and there was a stunt girl
Speaker 2: to do one of the falls so I wouldn't hit
Speaker 2: my head. But like after that they went and we
Speaker 2: pretty much were choreographing our own fights and they just
Speaker 2: didn't need stunts for that. The mud fight's all us.
Speaker 2: They're stunk of that, the famous mud fight. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you guys got this whatever, and they're just like, do
Speaker 2: do what every the hell you want to do? And
Speaker 2: we did, and we had so much fun, and we
Speaker 2: thought it was so funny to play these mortal enemies
Speaker 2: and do all this terrible stuff. But it was weird
Speaker 2: because these scenes, right me saying things, and she's crying.
Speaker 2: We're going out for sloopees later at seven eleven. It's like,
Speaker 2: so weird.
Speaker 6: How did you carry the negative response to Nelly in
Speaker 6: real life? It feels like it must have been overwhelming.
Speaker 2: It was really bizarre. But I'm weird. I have a
Speaker 2: very warped sense of humor, as you may have noticed
Speaker 2: having read my book, and I find it's a great
Speaker 2: survival mechanism. Way you one of my therapists once we're
Speaker 2: talking about that, I said, well, isn't humor just a
Speaker 2: defense mechanism? And she said, yeah, who the hell ever
Speaker 2: said you're not allowed to defend yourself. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a good defense mechanism. Great, go with that. See yeah, No,
Speaker 2: having a warped sense of humor is good. So I
Speaker 2: have a very peculiar sense of humor. And I also
Speaker 2: always liked villains. I talked about that I would watch
Speaker 2: the movies as a kid. It's like Captain Hook Yeah,
Speaker 2: cool man. And I liked villains. Oh God, I love
Speaker 2: Vincent Price, my hero Vincent Price, and even now, Sir
Speaker 2: Anthony Hawkins, I adore villains and things. So being a villain,
Speaker 2: I had a different attitude of I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: the villain, so that was a badge of honor. That
Speaker 2: was cool.
Speaker 6: Did you ever go through a period I mean you do.
Speaker 6: I want to in a minute talk about all of
Speaker 6: your advocacy work, but just before we get to that,
Speaker 6: did you ever try and distance yourself from Nelly with
Speaker 6: Did you go through a period of time where you're like,
Speaker 6: I want nothing to do with the idea of Nellie Olsen,
Speaker 6: I'm my own person. Because you seem now to have
Speaker 6: such a close relationship with the fan base, we heard
Speaker 6: on our trip over and over again how much people
Speaker 6: adore you. You personally heard them pretty much, yes, But Alison,
Speaker 6: we heard pretty consistent like of you. This is obviously
Speaker 6: a competition, but we heard about you consistently over and
Speaker 6: over again from everyone at all of the sites. So
Speaker 6: I'm but I wonder, like, was there to be a
Speaker 6: child star so strongly associated with one character. Did you
Speaker 6: go through a period where you're like, I'm not.
Speaker 2: Bad, you get me away from brief It was like
Speaker 2: it was right after the show in the eighties. So
Speaker 2: I talked about the book in the eighties, we were
Speaker 2: all supposed to beautiful and sexy. It was all like
Speaker 2: the sex comedies and the porkies and the as I said,
Speaker 2: every part I would offered in my early twenties was
Speaker 2: a cheerleader, naked or dead or a combination of all three,
Speaker 2: and it just didn't work for me. So there was apps,
Speaker 2: and there's a million bikini photos and posters and swimsuit
Speaker 2: photos out there and the fans are all finding them.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Somebody in Facebook just the other day went what the
Speaker 2: heck is this and put up like all my swimsuit
Speaker 2: pictures are like huh. So there was this whole campaign
Speaker 2: with my management and everyone Deverd's management. We are young, beautiful,
Speaker 2: modern sexy women. We are not children anymore. We've all
Speaker 2: grown up. We're off the show. We don't live in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundreds, we don't wear bustles. We can be
Speaker 2: on Dynasty in a hotel and Fantasy Island look at us,
Speaker 2: and so get out that swimsuit girls and take those pictures.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're doing that, which was like fun, you know, sorta,
Speaker 2: But yeah, there was a period it was like, how
Speaker 2: do we make this stop? Because I want to work
Speaker 2: and be play different parts. And then there were times
Speaker 2: where it was just kind of like because it was
Speaker 2: so never ending. It was every single day, and it
Speaker 2: was like, God, it's like gonna stop anytime soon, maybe
Speaker 2: no escape. And it's also Little House gets mentioned in
Speaker 2: other books and TV shows and movies, so there's like
Speaker 2: no escape and to the point where you can't okay,
Speaker 2: the movie network in the movie Network faint down a way.
Speaker 2: So that was I was like fifteen sixty and I
Speaker 2: went with friends and we went to see Network and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, la la, la, la la, I am not
Speaker 2: doing anything to do with the Lastnabry. Today. I'm out
Speaker 2: with my friends as a normal person, and there's a
Speaker 2: scene where the woman is complaining about their reality show
Speaker 2: about the Revolutionary group, and she said, the opposite the
Speaker 2: Monday night football another channel and Little House on the
Speaker 2: damn Prairie, and my friends will go anything like slumping
Speaker 2: down on my train. It's just like no wonder. I
Speaker 2: was reading a book the other night and it was
Speaker 2: like just something that well, you know, like the Mellie
Speaker 2: Olsen curls, and I'm like, God, there's just just never,
Speaker 2: just no escape. I can't go anywhere where it's not there.
Speaker 2: And so at some point in the late eighties and
Speaker 2: especially early nineties, because there was a big another wave
Speaker 2: because we had the VH I think it was the
Speaker 2: DVDs came out in the nineties and all Hellborough clothes
Speaker 2: and we had more cable, had more nickelodeon and stuff.
Speaker 2: At some point it was they can't beat him, join
Speaker 2: them thing finally kicked in. It's like, what the hell,
Speaker 2: what am I going to do? And I realized also
Speaker 2: because I look kind of weirdly the same, it's the
Speaker 2: bone structure. I never got a nose job, and this
Speaker 2: is kind of still it's the and a lot of
Speaker 2: people say, well, you look the same, and I go, oh,
Speaker 2: thank you. And at some point it was like, can't
Speaker 2: beat them, join them, and I also said it was
Speaker 2: I said, well, okay, I would have to literally have
Speaker 2: massive plastic surgery, dye my hair, and move to a
Speaker 2: country where the show isn't shown. And I don't know
Speaker 2: what country that is because I'm getting mailed from Russia
Speaker 2: and China now, so I don't know where they're not
Speaker 2: showing this where someone isn't good to going. Then you
Speaker 2: know what it said, it's good for that least, So it's
Speaker 2: there's no getting around it. So it's like, well, what
Speaker 2: are you gonna do? You can spend your whole And
Speaker 2: I also saw all the interviews would many, many, many
Speaker 2: celebrities who try to get away from their old show,
Speaker 2: so they have to spend a portion of the interview
Speaker 2: saying no, I don't want to talk about the show
Speaker 2: that I was onor that character. Now, how many minutes?
Speaker 2: Then how many interviews a day do so? How many
Speaker 2: minutes of each interview? So times a day multiply by
Speaker 2: let's say how many tick ticktac gag? How many hours
Speaker 2: or days out of the year do you have to
Speaker 2: spend saying please, don't talk about the thing. That's a
Speaker 2: lot of time. And it doesn't work because all of
Speaker 2: these people where they said I don't want to talk
Speaker 2: about the then everybody still did. So I'm like, so
Speaker 2: you can waste your breath and your energy futilely begging
Speaker 2: people to stop talking about the elephant in the room,
Speaker 2: or you can just go yes, it's an elephant and
Speaker 2: live your damn life.
Speaker 6: Well speaking, I mean it, going to your advocacy. Now,
Speaker 6: it's like you didn't just you can't beat them, join them.
Speaker 6: You have leveraged a character with few redeeming qualities until
Speaker 6: into a power of good? How did the advocacy begin?
Speaker 6: I remember, I mean, as I said, I'm I was
Speaker 6: born in the year Little House came out, and I
Speaker 6: remember hearing about AIDS through a lot of your conversations around. Yes,
Speaker 6: I mean that's very much in my memory of thinking
Speaker 6: about you culturally. So I'm wondering how did you move
Speaker 6: into that.
Speaker 2: During the show. When I'm still really young, it was
Speaker 2: always like toys for tots and telephones and things. You
Speaker 2: did Easter Seals in the March of Dimes, but the
Speaker 2: phone bank, all the celebrities, you know Jamie Fahr, like
Speaker 2: I gotch I cat you different and all the whole
Speaker 2: gang is and you'd answered the phones and stuff. During
Speaker 2: the show. I started going to Special Olympics, the big
Speaker 2: summer games at UCLA, and I loved it. I stayed
Speaker 2: the whole weekend. It was like a bless so I
Speaker 2: was encouraged to do so, mostly for press. They touched it,
Speaker 2: but I liked it. So I did all the charity
Speaker 2: things like signed me up. So I went to all
Speaker 2: the charity things. And then when Steve Tracyyed Perceval calls him,
Speaker 2: It's like I'm sick. What do you mean you're sick?
Speaker 1: Sick?
Speaker 3: How?
Speaker 2: And we had to play twenty questions and then he
Speaker 2: finally comes out that he has AIDS and this is
Speaker 2: eighty five. There's nothing. And he was on an experimental
Speaker 2: drug which incidentally involved intermuscular and he had to do
Speaker 2: injections himself and to his muscles and his thigh. It
Speaker 2: was really bad and it hurt. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: is it going to work? And he said no, it's
Speaker 2: too late to save me. But I'm thinking they might
Speaker 2: develop a cure after I'm dead. So I'm doing this,
Speaker 2: like holy crack. So I signed up at Age Project
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and in hopes of helping Steve. And then
Speaker 2: I also saw he had resources. His family stood by him,
Speaker 2: his friends stood by him, he had research other people didn't,
Speaker 2: And so I went to APLA to try to help people.
Speaker 2: They wound up on the hot line and I really
Speaker 2: took to it, and that was the crazy thing. Then
Speaker 2: there were all these people who weren't going to read
Speaker 2: the brochure, refusing to have people come speak on ads
Speaker 2: at their business, at their school. Oh it's the woman
Speaker 2: from Little House on the Prairie. That's okay. Then White
Speaker 2: You're didn't take medical advice from Nellie Olsen? Yes, And
Speaker 2: I went, okay, this is crazy, but they're willing to
Speaker 2: listen to me. I guess, I guess I'm doing this
Speaker 2: then and then it just escalated. And what I found
Speaker 2: is if you're famous, like even this much, you can
Speaker 2: do quite a bit. I always shocked when famous people
Speaker 2: don't do more. I'm like, seriously, you could just go
Speaker 2: on TV and say plant a tree, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: people will be planting trees. Really, you have a pulpits
Speaker 2: you can use.
Speaker 6: This is very quick and fun. Which is what episode
Speaker 6: do you hear about the most and what was your
Speaker 6: favorite episode of the show.
Speaker 2: I always say it's the favorite episode. I remember Dean
Speaker 2: Butler going, no, it's your favorite episode? I go, what
Speaker 2: is it? It's a Nelly fan favorite episode because he's like, no,
Speaker 2: he said hello, hello the episode. But I marry Laura
Speaker 2: what that's people's favorite episode Bunny where I go down
Speaker 2: the hill in the wheelchair.
Speaker 6: My mother watched that episode with me and she goes,
Speaker 6: Laura ingles ish, mean and awful, and it was the
Speaker 6: first time anybody had ever said anything critical about Laura,
Speaker 6: and I was like, but no, but Nellie. But that
Speaker 6: stands out in my mind because my mother was very
Speaker 6: on your side in that episode.
Speaker 2: But I did pretend to be paralyzed and ruin everyone's life.
Speaker 6: Everyone talks about that. I mean, you must know this,
Speaker 6: But that's the episode we heard about the most on
Speaker 6: the on the Road.
Speaker 2: Also, in most episodes, Nellie does things to ruin Laura's
Speaker 2: life and make her miserable, but in Bunny's the only episode,
Speaker 2: Nellie's insane behavior actually impacts everyone's. Doc Baker's go I
Speaker 2: don't know what's wrong with her? Is he cannot fix
Speaker 2: her and he's being told he's incompetent. He has failed
Speaker 2: because he cannot fix and he doesn't know what the
Speaker 2: hell's going on. Charles Ingles has to drop what he's
Speaker 2: doing and stop work to go fix up a wheelchair
Speaker 2: for her. He has other things to do. Suddenly he's
Speaker 2: having to get her a wheelchair. Nell's we saw Richard
Speaker 2: bull Mischel's crying in storage room with Laura and Paul
Speaker 2: come in to talk to Eli. He's crying. Does he
Speaker 2: thinks his daughter is crippled for life? Missus Olsen has
Speaker 2: a complete meltdown, complete nervous breakdown. She's never gonna be okay.
Speaker 2: That's also why Nels's grice, like, my wife is not
Speaker 2: going to recover from this. So now I've hurt both
Speaker 2: my parents, I've hurt Doc Baker, I've hurt Charles. This
Speaker 2: beadle is having to prepare the lessons for Laura to
Speaker 2: take home, and then Laura's homework and whole school career,
Speaker 2: and Ma's freaking out and she and Charles are fighting
Speaker 2: about Laura coming to take care of me, so it's
Speaker 2: now impacted their marriage, impact of her relationship with Ma.
Speaker 2: The Reverend Olden has to drop what he's doing to
Speaker 2: come over and counsel missus. Olsen the Blacksmith, we don't
Speaker 2: even see him, but at one point they say, yes,
Speaker 2: the horse that ran back. The blacksmith the door flour
Speaker 2: he knows, so he's now complicit in hiding this horse
Speaker 2: for missus. The Blacksmith has been dragged into this bullshit
Speaker 2: that Nellie Olson is doing, so literally everyone's at the teacher,
Speaker 2: the reverend, the doctor, the freaking blacksmith, all of these
Speaker 2: people have been dragged unwillingly, unknowingly into Nelly's drama because
Speaker 2: she decided that this boy she likes who has absolutely
Speaker 2: no interest in her whatsoever, but she's decided that she's
Speaker 2: mad that he's paying attention to Laura. So she's just
Speaker 2: gonna ruin everyone's life and doesn't care about consequences. All
Speaker 2: of these people she's now dragged into it and has
Speaker 2: the audacity do to sit there waist poking her with
Speaker 2: the needle. Now, I can't feel my eggs and she
Speaker 2: and she's like bad. I was like, oh oh wait,
Speaker 2: no I felt nothing, and like, oh oh I'm so tired.
Speaker 2: Oh let me lie back. Good God. So, yeah, she
Speaker 2: has it coming. She hasn't coming.
Speaker 6: Connected to this loosely is why do you think you're
Speaker 6: on good terms with so many of your co stars
Speaker 6: this many years later. It's striking to me that you
Speaker 6: all seem to be still friendly and connected and feel
Speaker 6: fondly for each other.
Speaker 2: For the most part, most of the people were Laws
Speaker 2: of Prow were really nice people generally, And there was
Speaker 2: this kind of, like I said, demilitarized zone, like okay,
Speaker 2: look you were at work, whatever the hell are you?
Speaker 2: People were fighting about it, We don't care, get getting
Speaker 2: on with it. So there was that that's left, and
Speaker 2: then over the years we've all kind of gone, well,
Speaker 2: I guess this is it. We did this thing, and
Speaker 2: I guess we're all in this boat here. Somebody asked
Speaker 2: me this said, how many people from Little House do
Speaker 2: you have on speed dial on your phone? And it
Speaker 2: was like fourteen. So yeah, yeah, we kind of hang out.
Speaker 2: And then with all the kookie autograph shows and events,
Speaker 2: and you know, the fiftieth, the fiftieth An of Us
Speaker 2: is coming. Ah, that's gonna be chaos. Wallet GROW's having
Speaker 2: a thing, seem Valley's having a thing. Everybody's having a thing.
Speaker 2: So some of these autograph shows and things have gotten
Speaker 2: to be kind of good, some of these events. Oddly,
Speaker 2: it was Kevin Hagen and Dab's Greer, Doctor Baker and
Speaker 2: the Reverence who were going out to Wallet Grove in
Speaker 2: places quite early on in the eighties, so I sort
Speaker 2: of followed like them. Really I enjoyed going to these things,
Speaker 2: and then other people start going what now, it's at
Speaker 2: the point I did this, got signed up for this
Speaker 2: crazy event in Macon, Missouri, that suddenly I have Charlotta
Speaker 2: and Pat Laberteau, Miss b Landygark Colling. It's just good
Speaker 2: I don't know. I haven't been there yet, and they're like,
Speaker 2: Allison's doing it. They're all calling, you said a good gig,
Speaker 2: Let's call Allison. So I'm like it, don't look at me, man,
Speaker 2: But I ensured that it was a really good gig.
Speaker 2: So yeah, we're all going back. And now the Waltons.
Speaker 2: The Waltons are all doing the Macon, Missouri pickers Mart.
Speaker 2: We're doing me and oh gosh, I think a bundle
Speaker 2: hoo forgets what's going Dean Pat Charlotte. We're all going
Speaker 2: to the Fall Pickers Mart now in Lincoln, Illinois. But
Speaker 2: the entire Walton's cast are doing the Fall Pickers Market
Speaker 2: in Macon because I did it and they it was fun.
Speaker 2: So now the whole Walton's are going. They're playing copycat now,
Speaker 2: so everyone's kind of like now calling each other, Hey
Speaker 2: have you heard about this thing? Is that fun? Should
Speaker 2: I know? Should I go? And then the fiftieth is coming,
Speaker 2: so we're all getting on the bandwagon for that.
Speaker 6: Does it ever make you sad that Michael Lindon is
Speaker 6: not around who witnessed the longevity or a would he
Speaker 6: have enjoyed it?
Speaker 2: And oh yeah, yeah, because he as I've talked about
Speaker 2: I was the only one who knew. Dean Butler has
Speaker 2: talked about this, Melissa Gilbert has talked about this. Every
Speaker 2: has talked about this. That at some point or another,
Speaker 2: he said, you know, everyone's going to be watching these
Speaker 2: shows long after we're all gone, he said, long after
Speaker 2: I'm dead. It was like this prophetic thing that these
Speaker 2: shows are, and everyone he said it to it. Yeah right,
Speaker 2: oh man, and like didn't believe him when that's a
Speaker 2: nice idea, but he's crazy, and here we all are.
Speaker 2: He knew. Nobody else the network certainly did. NBC was like,
Speaker 2: what that has happened? They didn't get. People did not know.
Speaker 2: I mean, we were actors. We're like, well, this is
Speaker 2: a good job, and then you know, we'll get another job.
Speaker 2: La la la, la la la. We didn't get. Michael got.
Speaker 2: He said, no, this thing is just gonna go on forever.
Speaker 5: They're going to be read forever.
Speaker 6: And he was ready.
Speaker 2: He's right, He's always ready.
Speaker 6: First of all, this was such a joy. Thank you
Speaker 6: so much.
Speaker 2: Phew.
Speaker 6: I mean truly, this was such a pleasure.
Speaker 7: This episode was produced by me Emily Meronoff, as well
Speaker 7: as Mary Do and Shina Ozaki. Sound design and mixing
Speaker 7: was done by Amanda Rose Smith. Our Wonderful theme and
Speaker 7: additional music was composed by Elise McCoy. We are executive
Speaker 7: produced by Glennis McNichol, Joe Piazza, Nikki Etre and Ali Perry.
Speaker 7: If you haven't been following us on social media, can
Speaker 7: you even call yourself a Wilder fan?
Speaker 2: Get on there.
Speaker 7: People follow us on Instagram at Wilder Underscore Podcast and
Speaker 7: on TikTok at Wilder Podcast