WEBVTT - BONUS: "Oh, that Nellie Oleson!" with Alison Anrgrim 0:00:00.880 --> 0:00:03.640 Hello, Emily, Hello Glennis. 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:05.920 We're back. We're back. 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:06.720 Happy fall. 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.480 Yeah, it's funny to be talking for Wilder in the 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:11.920 Fall because it's not a road trip season anymore. It's like, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.200 but it is sit in your room, listen to podcasts, 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.840 and I'll then maybe watch Little House on the Prairie 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:19.480 on your TV season. 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:21.560 It's definitely cozy season. 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:23.600 I was just thinking, it's a little over a year 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:27.480 ago that we drove to Mansfield, Missouri for the Wilder 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:29.360 Days Festival. 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.320 That's true. A year since you heard pause Fiddle and 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:33.440 your life was changed. 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.640 A year since I heard pause Fiddle, and we then 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:38.839 subsequently went to Graceland. 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:42.680 Made our pilgrimages. So we're dropping a. 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:49.080 Surprise bonus episode because someone in the comments somewhere, maybe 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.599 more than one person actually, in various forms of request, 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:58.760 asked us to all cap release all the interviews, which 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:01.720 I think is a solid request because we did so 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:06.880 many amazing interviews for the podcast that we have like 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.200 a wealth of bonus material. And this interview we did 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:16.040 with Alison Arngrim, who is the actress obviously who played 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.319 Nellie Olsen in the television show, was I think one 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.440 of our first interviews wasn't it. 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:21.880 It was. 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.560 It was kind of right after we got back from 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.000 that Mansfield road trip, which was our last trip, and 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:30.319 we were starting to put all of our tape together 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:34.320 and start collecting all the extra interviews we needed, and we. 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:35.640 Started thinking about the TV show. 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:38.520 Allison's name had come up at so many of the 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:40.480 sites that we knew that she was the first person 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:41.160 we had to talk to. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.000 People loved her at every one of the houses. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.880 Everyone who'd worked with her, everyone who'd met her raved 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.520 about her, which I'm not surprised by. But she was 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.200 just a delightful interview. We could have talked to her forever. 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.920 I would just say, when we conducted these interviews, it 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.160 wasn't with the idea that the full interview would be aired. 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.960 So they are, while wonderful, you're getting a rough You're 0:02:05.960 --> 0:02:08.840 getting a rough, behind the scenes cut, which does not 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:14.320 diminish from the intelligence or charm or insight that Allison 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:14.880 brings to. 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:18.799 This And something audience should also know going into this 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.080 is most of the cast of Little House. I've written memoirs, 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:26.080 Allison's memoir Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. Is am I 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:28.000 going to offend everyone by saying it's the best one. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:31.600 It's very very good. It's very good about her and 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.320 about her time on Little House and tells you a 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:35.519 lot of things you wouldn't otherwise know. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.079 No, absolutely, it's so personal, it's so gripping, it's so funny, 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:46.240 and it's really intense. She talks about the sexual abuse 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.480 she suffered from a family member, and so keep that 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:51.760 in mind if you're listening to this. We do touch 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:54.680 on that in the interview, and if you haven't read 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.080 Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, I would highly recommend listening 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:01.000 to the audiobook because she reads it and it really 0:03:01.080 --> 0:03:03.000 is I think, I say at the beginning of this interview, 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.440 and when we first spoke to her, I had just 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.079 finished listening to it and felt like I'd been with her, 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:12.920 Like it's so wonderfully done, and she's so wonderful and 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.440 had so much to say, not just about the television show, 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:19.320 but also about lour Ingles Wilder and her legacy and 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.720 the real life version, which if you've listened to the 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:23.880 podcast you've heard some of her insights on that. 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.639 But again, this is the full deep cut. 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.480 Yeah, we hope you enjoy it, and we've gotten a 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:31.600 lot of messages from all of you about who you'd 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.040 want to hear from, so maybe we'll do more of this. 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:37.280 Everyone has gone off to new projects, but hopefully we'll 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.400 be able to keep releasing these every month or so 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:46.040 because we definitely have plenty of amazing material from so 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:47.720 many amazing, generous people. 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:48.680 So thanks for. 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:50.920 Listening, and thank you everyone for your feedback and the 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:55.440 reviews you're leaving on Apple's. We're very grateful and continue 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:57.480 to be very proud of this podcast. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:00.040 So proud, so happy with it, excited to bring you 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:11.720 guys more, and we hope you entrew the episode. 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.080 Okay, Alison, I'm Glynnis. 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:17.360 Hey Glennis. 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.479 I'm so it thrills that you're hearing over the Moon. 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:22.800 I was re listening to your book. I was listening 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:24.520 to the audio version, so I feel like I've been 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:26.039 living with you. 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:27.600 Oh do you like it? 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:27.880 Oh? 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.360 My god, because it's like when I wrote it, people 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:32.520 read it and said like, wow, it's like I can 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:33.640 hear you in my head. 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:33.960 God. 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:35.760 I hope you're doing the audiobook. I know I did 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.120 the audio book the way. Yep, that's exactly what I 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:38.960 thought it would sound. 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:42.760 I'm sure you hear this all the time. It was 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.200 like tapped into some childhood part of my brain that 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.279 had such a strong relationship with the show that it 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:50.440 was both like eight year old me was listening to 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:52.400 it and present day me was listening to it at 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:55.440 the same time, and it was really powerful. I am 0:04:55.440 --> 0:04:58.560 fascinated by so much about you, and also obviously about 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.640 your relationship to the show. But just to start, can 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:06.560 you briefly walk through your origin backstory and how you 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.880 came to acting and how you came to Little House. 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.640 Well, I am a crazy ex child star. My whole 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:15.840 family were in show business. I mean literally even my 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:18.599 aunt and uncle. My aunt was a soprano, my uncle 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.719 played the violin. My mother was the voice of Gasper 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.599 the Friendly Ghost. My father was managing Liberaci. It was crazy. 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.880 So everyone's in show business. So I started working when 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:32.560 I was about five six years old, commercials, little shows. 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:35.280 I did a movie when I was ten, And the 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.440 funny part is after I did the movie, I wasn't 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:40.159 working a lot, and my father's a manager, sat me 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.320 down and said, you know, you may never work again, 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:43.919 or you may not work to you're an adult, or 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:45.520 you might never work again at all. We don't know. 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:47.680 And then like six months later I got little huse 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.880 than pre I read for the part of Laura. I 0:05:50.880 --> 0:05:52.919 read for the part of Mary. Laura Ingles was like 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.279 the search for Scarlett O'Hara for eight year olds. I 0:05:56.320 --> 0:05:59.919 mean everyone the world, right, But of course Melissa go 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:02.839 nailed it. So I come back and there's this part 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.160 of Nellioles. I had not read the books. I did 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:06.880 not read the books till after I got the show, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.240 so I was clueless. And I come in and I 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.279 see this Nelliolson character and I start reading this and 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:14.640 that's when I turned to my father. It's like this girl, 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:18.120 said total then and I read it for him and 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.520 he started laughing. He said, don't change it. Please put 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:22.440 the pages down, don't look at him. Go in and 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.640 read it exactly like that. And I did. And there 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.400 was Michael Landon, Kat mcgrae and the producers and I 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.920 read it and they laughed hysterically, and then they said 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:34.440 to do that one part again and a goodly child actor. 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.159 I said, yes, what do you want me to change 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:38.359 and they said nothing. Has read the thing about the 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.400 house again because the my home speech from the episode 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:43.839 Country Girls, and I read it again, and they laughed 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:47.320 their heads off and I was hired immediately. Which is 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.040 that a compliment to my acting or does that say 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.320 something about my personality? I have no idea. 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:53.279 It's amazing to me when you said the my Home speech. 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:54.760 I haven't seen that episode in years, and I know 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.040 precisely what you were talking about, right. 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.440 It's in your head, yeah, because it's like the best thing. 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:03.160 There's this one joke in my Home Speech. I do 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.080 not know that every eleven year old got the joke. 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.360 Maybe that's because I got the joke and I played 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:12.560 it for that. We have three sets of dishes, one 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.760 for every day, one for Sunday, and one for when 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.920 someone very special and important comes to visit, which we 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:23.200 have never even used yet. Hi, you live in Walda Grove, 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.120 The Queen ain't coming. You don't know. 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:32.920 Anybody Aspirational dishes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. And this leads into, 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:35.240 I think a much broader question. I'm sure you get 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:36.920 asked a lot, but why do you think the show 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.560 still resonates? I mean, it's on television right now. I 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.080 think it keeps the Hallmark Channel in business. It's on 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:46.440 TV around the world. Why is that. 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:49.240 Okay, you have to say. I mean I literally wake 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.840 up in the middle of the night and go, somebody 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.480 somewhere is watching us the very right now. It's literally 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:58.320 because it's in every country on Earth. It's been dubbed 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:02.120 into every language. There's DVDs in every language. It's bananas, 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:04.320 and I've met people from like every country on Earth 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:06.440 who are like, oh, yeah, I've seen every episode. Was 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.680 that the guy near Sri Lanka they only got little 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.040 house in the prairie and lost in space. I said, 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.920 how confused about America? Were you? I've been asked this 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:17.080 about a million times that we've tried to figure it out, 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.200 and all of us from the show like why why. 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.240 I think that the problems of the Ingles are universal. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:28.600 The majority of people on Earth don't actually have very 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.360 much money, and the Ingles live in like a two 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.680 room house with a whole bunch of kids and worry 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.280 if they're going to make it through the week. That's 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:42.400 really how probably eighty ninety percent of humans on the 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:45.600 planet are living in a tidy place with a lot 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:48.080 of children, wondering if they'll have enough to eat. And 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.080 this is how people, real people are living. And there's 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:53.360 a rich family in town at the store who give 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.040 them a hard time, and there's always a crop failure 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.440 or a blizzard or locusts, and they cling together and 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:03.640 make it through. That's reality. Did Dallas, The Dynasty, the 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.240 Fabulous shows were was it friends? With these people like 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:09.000 have no jobs and have three bedroom apartments in New York? 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:14.319 That doesn't really happen for maybe a tiny segment of humanity, 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:16.720 whereas little house people tune in and go, yeah, that's 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:18.960 pretty much it. When you look at the fact that 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.800 the books got published at the height of the Great Depression, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.480 so people were like, oh, it was worse for the Ingles. 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.680 No matter how bad things are the Depression, the Ingles 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:30.920 have it worse and they're muddling through because there was 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.400 a recession in the eighteen seventies when that took place, 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:36.960 America was having recession and people were having a terrible time. 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:38.920 So then the books come out in the nineteen thirties, 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.600 and when does the show come out seventy four? Remember 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.760 whip inflation now in gas rationing, and you could buy 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.720 meat like every other day, whatever the heck that it 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:51.840 was a mess. We were having a terrible recession and 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.920 suddenly here's Charles Ingles saying the slate pencils up to 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.960 two pennies? Oh man, what are we going to do? Genius? 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.480 And here we are get When did the show like 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:05.760 explode in popularity again for the eight thousandth time? The pandemic. 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.960 We have an episode called plague, and an episode called 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:13.319 quarantine the anthrax, and all of us in the show 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:15.439 we're hearing from people on Facebook and email. It going. 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.680 I had no idea it was a huge connection with 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.240 the pandemic because people were home and they were frightened, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:24.720 and they said, I need something familiar, and here it was, 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.439 and here were the Kles dealing with terrible and curable diseases. 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:32.280 So I think it's that these are the problems that 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.000 people really deal with. And it's a very emotional show. 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:36.840 So I always joke about how the French love it 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:41.559 because Charles' Ingkles he cries beautiful. It's an emotional show. 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.319 It taps right into that and people act like it's real. 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:46.520 It's really intense. 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.440 I was really struck by your anecdote in the book 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.600 about being at a school function with Catherine McGregor and 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.240 someone coming up behind you and kicking you and then 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.760 you're opening anecdote about being at a fanfare and someone 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.760 walking up who it sounded like they're about my agent 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:04.840 saying I forgive you, and the intensity of it. Guess 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.640 the intensity of that connection must be overwhelming. 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.000 It's it's mind blowing. I mean, we get the people 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.480 who come for autographs and sometimes they cry because it's 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.480 so intense to meet the person that you've grown up watching. 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.040 I was just a Knoxville, Tennessee use Fanboy convention and 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.160 it was Melissa Gilbert, Karen Grassley, and me, So you 0:11:26.160 --> 0:11:31.040 can imagine how bananas people went and these were up 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.160 on these huge things and the line comes up today 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:34.680 and so people come on and they say, yes, you 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:37.559 come around, get a picture. And we've had this before, 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:39.560 Like I remember my husband Bob was with me during 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:41.839 one thing where we'd have people start shaking and I'd 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:43.480 go put my armor on from the photo and they 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:45.880 burst into tears. We'd have to get them together, like 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.040 wait a minute for them. So we had criers and 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.120 they all cried. Of course when they saw maw Karen. 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.360 They all cried at Karen's table. I had Kleenex at 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.880 my table because we're getting criers and I of course 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.760 could tease them and make to get them laughing, because 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.000 they'd come up and I go, uh uh, what's how 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.199 many is this? You are a number four? You are 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:06.280 the fourth crier of the morning. 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:07.320 Wow. 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:09.640 I was like, how well we got Kleenex? 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:10.080 Come on? 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:12.120 Do you think? And so yeah, we talked about how 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:13.680 many criers we got in to day. 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.880 Who gets the strongest reaction from the fans? Do you think? 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.240 I know Melissa Gilbert. Obviously it's Laura. She'd people just 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:22.800 go into a coma at the site. He's like, oh 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.600 my god, Laura. They just like flip out completely. A 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:27.880 lot of people don't think they're gonna be emotional. Then 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.880 they meet Ma and that voice and she sounds the same, 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.040 and she's so sweet. It's her. I've seen people really 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.800 lose it over Charlotte Stewart, Miss Beatle. We were at 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:42.480 an event and they're getting autographed. Charlotte's practically doing therapy. 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.320 I'm signing autographs. They turn around and she's holding this 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:49.760 guy's hand, going yes, I understand. He's like sobbing, hysterical. 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:51.880 I'm like, what is going on over there? She's like 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.640 it's like out of control. And then it's weird because 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.079 you know, she was in David Lynch's eraser Head and 0:12:57.200 --> 0:13:00.040 on Twin Peaks and she was in Trimmers. So we 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.520 had all the horror people and like the Twin Peaks 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:05.760 people coming and the Little House people. It was like crazy. 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:09.280 I get obviously an extremely strong reaction. I get a 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:12.000 very different reaction. We all have our own like different ones. 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.199 And the women who are still in love with Almonzo, 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.120 poor Dean Butler, he blushes, you know, he blushes. The 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.320 women come up and go he's still so handsome and 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.160 he's like like going breat red. So they're still in 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:24.679 love with him. So that's the whole world. 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:28.600 That kind of ties into something I found really powerful 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:33.520 about the book. And you're writing about your upbringing and 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.160 the abuse at the hands of your brother, and I 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:39.480 was born in seventy four, the year Little House came out, 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:41.680 and so when you were writing about how in your 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.560 childhood the absent sort of ABC after school specials or 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:49.160 a language around traumatic experiences with children, I was really 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.120 struck by how in the show you were doing some 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.600 of the craziest storylines in Little House that I think 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.000 people mock about. You know, it really goes what feels 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:00.000 like a little off the rails in terms of narrative 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.720 from time to time. But I was listening to your book, 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:05.840 I thought, oh, but in those episodes, it is really providing, 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:09.520 you know, an experience for kids who might not have 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:12.920 seen those experiences anywhere else on TV. Did that ever 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.120 strike you as sort of an amazing thing that you're 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:18.080 participating in a show that was sort of providing a 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.280 language or an experience for kids that wouldn't have otherwise 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:22.240 had access to it. 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:25.520 Well, we did cover everything. Remember, it was so weird because, okay, 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.040 we're doing the eighteen hundreds, we're doing law, but it's 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.720 the nineteen seventies and the Norman Leer shows are on, 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:37.480 and there's all this cutting edge television talking about racism, sexism, 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.960 the women's movement, the drug problem, all this stuff is happening. 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:45.640 So we're actually technically doing it, but because it's the 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.400 eighteen seventies, it's going like whoosh over the heads of 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.360 anyone who would object, and other people are going, yes, 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:55.680 thank god they're covering. Is the Civil War soldier who 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.920 comes back and he has PTSD or shell shock should 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.920 be there and he's a to morphine This is the 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.360 same year when Vietnam veterans were coming home addicted to heroin, 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.040 and here we have a Civil War soldier with the morphine. 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.960 They did like, hello, how many people were living that episode? 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:16.760 The poor, the mother. So we were doing these episodes, 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:19.880 the women want the right to own property. We did 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.240 all these episodes. We had episodes about alcoholism, about drugs. 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:28.320 Even Albert, the teenage on morphine became a drug. The 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.160 good boy from the Good family going out on drugs. 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.880 This is what people were experiencing. We were showing all 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.200 of these things. We had child abuse, we had special abuse, 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:40.240 and of course the Sylvia episode, or as people do 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:42.160 refer to it, clown rape. 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:44.600 I'm not laughing because it's funny, but that is the 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:45.480 way people refer to it. 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.640 It's horrified. It's a very very disturbing episode, but again 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:53.400 a real thing that happens, and happened in the eighteen hundreds. 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.720 Because people will say, oh, back in those days, well 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:57.720 back in those days, all the same things happened and 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.080 things were terrible too. People dealt with it. And that's 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:05.000 why when you read like Pioneer Girl Laura's real autobiography 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.840 and see the little stories that they said, maybe not 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.800 put that in banks a Plump Creek. The things that 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:15.520 didn't make it into the children's books, you go, whoa, yikes. 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:18.360 And of course she was dealing with the same kind 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.400 of harassment and the threat of molestation and terrible things 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.720 happening around her. And so that's real life. We did 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:27.720 work all those things out, and a lot of things 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.400 that were covered on nineteen seventy shows like Family or 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.360 All in the Family or Maud we were sneaking them 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.280 in too, but everybody was in bonnets, so it was 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.840 somehow safe and okay, And of course Paul and ma 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:41.200 were there to help you deal with it. 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.240 Yeah, the line you said, I think something along lines 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.880 of Michael Lannon fleshed out characters that Laura only implied 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.000 in the book when you read Prairie Frizer, as you say, 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.920 pioneer Girl, this idea that she couldn't look some of 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.440 her traumatic experiences in the face, and the show was 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:58.480 able to depict them. 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:03.360 The books, the Engles don't have a son, and there's 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:05.800 no baby who dies. That doesn't happen in the books. 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.840 It happens in the show, but it happened in real life. 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.600 But the family was so traumatized by the death of 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.480 the little boy that they did not talk about it. 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:18.600 So all this stuff in the books is like whoa. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:21.159 So then when they complain on the show, like, well, 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:22.920 on the show, will you change this? Have you read 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:24.760 the books? The timelines are different, and then when you 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:26.760 read the real timelines and the stuff she really went 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:29.960 through the ad sor but yeah, they could not bring 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.560 themselves to talk about the poor child, so she didn't 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:35.800 do that in the books, never spoke of it. And 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.680 then in the TV show, of course Michael said, what, 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.320 that's like the greatest episode ever. Of course we're going 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:44.640 to do that. And then of course Laura runs away 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:49.160 to a mountain. How she found a mountain in Minnesota? 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:52.000 I always say she ran across four states to like 0:17:52.080 --> 0:17:55.400 Colorado or something. I don't know. She finds a big 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.760 mountain at that and then at the top of the 0:17:57.760 --> 0:18:03.400 mountain is Ernest bourg Dye, who is apparently gone. And 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.640 that was my And it's one of the greatest episodes 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:08.920 ever made. It's one of the favorite episodes. It's Melissa's 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.639 favorite apps. It is one of the best episodes ever 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.600 of like Anything, and it is genius, and it totally works. 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:18.439 That is always been my favorite episode. I watched it 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.159 not long ago, so remind me of my shepherd, the 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:24.760 Lord's Ice Shepherd. I would pay for a Little House 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:29.280 series of you doing the voiceover of like verbally annotating 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.080 the entire series as we go. Speaking of the books, 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.000 which you clearly you know are very knowledgeable about. When 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:36.440 did you come to the book? 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:38.280 Well, all of a sudden, show did the I guess 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.760 i'd better get the book where Charlotte said she got 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:42.679 a book at a rummage sale and I think it 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.880 was like The Long Winter, one of the really hard ones. 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.160 She said, I started reading this book and like, by 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.280 page three, Mary is blind and the dog dies. I said, 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:53.720 I said, what am I reading? This is awful? But 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:58.119 what yes, what happened? And then like years later, I 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.560 remember going back and rereading Plumb Creek in the first 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:03.560 onood Little House in the Big Woods, going oh, okay, 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:05.840 these are pretty good. And then of course the pandemic 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:08.600 hit and I said, I haven't read those things in years, 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:11.760 and I thought, well, I'm hab at home. Everything I 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:15.040 was doing was canceled, like, okay, I'm here for the duration. 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:18.280 Clearly I need to do something interesting and I thought, well, 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:20.160 go back, I have time. I'll go read the Little 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.439 House Books. And I had just taken a workshop where 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.240 this great acting teacher said, you know, people don't read 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.399 aloud enough at home. It's really good diction and training, 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.120 he said, But as an actor, he said, next thing, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.320 you're sitting around the house, read a magazine out loud, 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:36.399 read to the cat. It's really good for you. And 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.160 then I went, everyone else is bored out of their minds. 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.760