The popular new adaptation of “Little House on the Prairie,” which began streaming on Netflix earlier this month, has caused a resurgence of interest in the original 1974 television series starring Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon.
But what happened to the original cast?
Melissa Gilbert is best known for her portrayal of Laura Ingalls in the original series, which she began in 1974 at just 9 years old.
The 62-year-old had already been on shows like “Gunsmoke” and “Emergency” when the show started.
Also serving as the narrator of the show, Gilbert stayed on “Little House on the Prairie” for all nine seasons, until 1983.
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During her time on the show, she made several TV movies, including “The Miracle Worker,” “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Splendor in the Grass.”
She also reprised her role in the TV movies “Little House Years,” “Little House: Look Back to Yesterday,” “Little House: The Final Farewell” and “Little House: Bless All the Dear Children.”
Gilbert continued to act after the show ended on dozens of TV movies and she also voiced Barbara Gordon on “Batman: The Animated Series” from 1992 to 1994.
Gilbert also made TV appearances on shows like “Touched by an Angel,” “Providence,” “7th Heaven” and “Nip/Tuck.” She had a recurring role on Hallmark’s “When Calls the Heart,” but recently revealed in an Instagram post that she would not be returning to the show. She said she was told that was due to “budget issues.”
The news came after her husband Timothy Busfield, who she married in 2013, was charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse in January. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in February on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor.
Busfield has denied the charges and Gilbert has continued to support him, telling ABC in April that he is the “last person in the world who would hurt a child.”
“I trust him with my children’s lives, with my grandchildren’s lives, my nieces and nephews,” she added. “He is an honorable, caring, generous human being.”
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Gilbert also defended the new reboot after she said she’d seen fans debating on social media whether the new version or the original were historically accurate and faithful to the books.
“The short answer is no, neither are entirely accurate to the times nor the books,” she wrote in a Substack essay.
After giving several examples of inaccuracies, she wrote: “My hope is that folks realize that these are all perfect examples of dramatic license. Even the real Laura took dramatic license in writing her books. For example, in the book, ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ all three Ingalls girls are older than they were in real life.”
She added, “So rather than getting all twisted up in what’s real and what’s dramatized, maybe just sit back and go for the ride the creative minds behind these shows want to take you on. If you like it, stick with it. If you don’t, you don’t have to watch.”
Michael Landon, who played Laura’s father Charles Ingalls on the show, began acting in the 1950s, appearing on shows like “Cheyenne,” “Suspicion” and “The Rifleman.” He was also in the movie “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.”
Landon directed many of the show’s episodes and wrote and produced the show.
Before “Little House,” he starred as Little Joe Cartwright on the long-running series “Bonanza.”
Landon continued to work on several TV movies after the show ended, and he starred as angel Jonathan Smith on the 1984 to 1989 series “Highway to Heaven.”
He also reprised his role as Charles Ingalls in four TV movies.
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Landon died at 54 years old in 1991, just months after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Gilbert called Landon a “mentor and father figure” in a Fox News Digital interview in 2024. She said she saw her TV dad a week before he died.
“There were always funny moments with Michael,” she said. “Even as sick as he was, he still maintained his incredible sense of humor.”
Gilbert frequently posts memories of him on her Instagram, writing earlier this month, “I’ve always felt like the luckiest girl in the world because he chose me to be his ‘Halfpint.’ Working with him was more than formative. I learned most of what I know about our industry from him.”
Karen Grassle, who played Laura’s mother Caroline, was mainly a theater and Broadway actress before landing the role on “Little House.”
After the show ended, the 84-year-old continued to act until 2021, starring in the movie “Not to Forget.”
Grassle had a contentious relationship with Landon while on the show, which stemmed from a salary dispute in Season 2 and prompted her to leave a year before the show ended.
She formed a special bond with her onscreen children “so they felt comfortable doing scenes with me as their mother,” but her relationship with Landon, whom she called an “amazing, multi-talented person,” soured, according to People magazine.
“I felt insulted as his co-star on a hit series,” Grassle told the New York Post about his refusal to grant her a raise, arguing she should be paid the same as her onscreen children. “I didn’t want to gouge anybody, but I expected a fair wage.”
She said Landon also cut her onscreen time during the dispute and made sexist jokes on set.
The actress reconciled with Landon before his death, telling the Post: “I am very grateful that we mended our fences.”
Grassle is also very proud of her time on “Little House,” calling her character “an incredibly strong woman with a nature full of texture. Her spirit is one to live by.”
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Melissa Sue Anderson played Laura’s older sister Mary Ingalls on the show.
The 63-year-old was the only member of the cast to be nominated for an Emmy for an episode about her character going blind.
Two years older than Gilbert when she started on the pioneer show, Anderson had only done a little TV work — including as Bobby Brady’s first kiss — before “Little House.”
Anderson made her film debut in the horror movie “Happy Birthday to Me” in 1981 and after the show ended, she made TV appearances on shows like “Hotel,” “Murder She Wrote,” “The Equalizer” and “The Love Boat.”
She met her husband, Michael Sloan, while appearing in the 1980s reprisal of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” The couple welcomed two daughters and Sloan died in 2025.
Anderson and Gilbert famously didn’t get along.
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“We were very, very different,” Anderson told the Atlanta Constitution-Journal.
Anderson also published a memoir about her time on the show called “The Way I See It: A Look Back at My Life on Little House.”
Gilbert felt that Anderson acted like the boss on set.
“From the moment we walked onto that set, Melissa Sue Anderson was the boss of me,” she said in an interview, according to Parade. “She took that absolutely seriously. She was two years older than me, which, you know, when you’re 9 and 11 is a big deal.”
Gilbert added, “She was tough on me both off and on camera, but on camera especially.”
Anderson explained that she was just very shy, telling Harry Brownstone on his podcast last year: “I wish I had been more outgoing so I could have enjoyed it more and been more easygoing about everything.”
However, the pair reunited last year at Gilbert’s off-Broadway play “Pen Pals.”
“Reconnection with a sister,” Gilbert wrote. “Long, healing talks. Lots of reminiscing. Lots of catching up. Lots of laughter and a few tears.”
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“Just us Ingalls girls. The best part is, the past is now just that and we can move forward as the sisters/friends we always wanted to be,” she wrote.
Twins Rachel Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush were just 3 years old when they were cast as younger sister Carrie Ingalls.
Sharing the role for eight years, they chose to leave after the eighth season when they were 12 years old.
“Everybody separated, and I didn’t see anybody,” Rachel Lindsay said at a 50th anniversary reunion, according to Entertainment Weekly. “And that was really hard for me personally because I didn’t realize how connected I had been to everybody until years later.”
“You make these really deep, intense bonds working with each other every single day, and then when it’s over, you’re just supposed to be like, ‘Okay, that was nice. Bye,’” she told the outlet. “And it’s really hard that way.”
Both sisters retired from acting in 1983 to focus on their education.
In 2014, she married Daniel Sanchez, whom she first met when he lived near the set and used to sneak on to hang out with the cast and crew, according to People magazine.
She also has a grown daughter from a previous relationship.
Sidney acted in “Hambone and Hillie” in 1983 and Rachel Lindsay was in an episode of “Matt Houston.”
Sidney just wrote a children’s book called “Seven Sisters: The Lantern of Humanity.”
“I remember when they were making the movie ‘Return to Oz.’ My sister made it to the final three girls who were selected,” Sidney told Fox News Digital last month.
“They all did screen tests, and for the silliest of reasons, they chose another girl over her,” she said. “Of course, we all know there can only be one choice in the end, but it’s a lot of pressure for children. So I decided I was going to explore other things because sometimes you go to what they call ‘cattle calls,’ where there are so many people competing for the same role. The casting directors aren’t always nice.”
The two sisters were credited as “Lindsay Sidney Greenbush” on the show.
Nellie Oleson, the daughter of the mercantile store owners who bullied Laura, was played by Alison Arngrim.
The 64-year-old was just 12 when she began acting opposite Gilbert, saying at the 50th reunion the two of them were “like sisters” on set, according to People.
“It’s so completely bonkers,” Arngrim said. “Here’s Melissa Gilbert and I playing mortal enemies, beating each other senseless all week. And then on the weekends, we’d go to each other’s house for a slumber party, and we were hanging out.”
She is also the author of “Confessions of A Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated” and had a one-woman show called “Confessions of a Prairie Bitch.”
In 2002, she was honored with the Young Artist Former Child Star Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on the show.
Aside from “Little House, Arngrim also made appearances on shows like “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” the TV movie “Life Interrupted” and she recently made a cameo on the “Little House” reboot.
Katherine MacGregor played nasty gossip Harriet Oleson on the show.
After she died at 93 years old in 2018, Gilbert called her “outspoken and hilariously funny” in an Instagram post.
“A truly gifted actress as she was able to play a despicable character but with so much heart. Her Harriet Oleson was the woman our fans loved to hate. A perfect antagonist,” she added.
“The thing people outside of our prairie family didn’t know, was how loving and nurturing she was with the younger cast.”
Before “Little House,” MacGregor acted on shows like “Mister Peepers,” “Mannix,” “Emergency!” “All in the Family” and “Ironside.”
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She was also a successful Broadway actress and she returned to the theater after the show ended. She retired from acting in the early 2000s.
Richard Bull played Nels Oleson, husband to Harriet who, with her, owned the town mercantile store.
Bull began acting in the 1950s, landing parts on shows like “Perry Mason,” “Highway Patrol,” “The Virginian,” “The Fugitive,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Gidget,” “Gomer Pyle: USMC,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Bewitched,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Bonanza” before the show’s run.
He also starred as the doctor on “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” from 1964 to 1968.
He continued to act until 2011 on shows like “Lou Grant,” “Knots Landing,” “Hillstreet Blues,” “Designing Women” and “ER.”
Bull died at 89 years old in 2014.
He also reunited with Landon on three episodes of “Highway to Heaven.”
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Dean Butler played Laura’s eventual husband, Almanzo Wilder, who came onto the show in the sixth season.
He also appeared on shows like “CHiPs,” “Fantasy Island,” “Who’s the Boss?” “The Love Boat,” “Hotel,” and had a recurring role on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
From 1986 until 1988, he starred on “The New Gidget” as Jeff “Moondoggie” Griffin.
His last acting role was in 2008, and since then he has mainly worked behind the camera as a sports, entertainment and documentary producer, including a docuseries he narrated called “The Little House Phenomenon: A Place in Television History.”
Butler, like Gilbert, commended the reboot, writing on Instagram earlier this month: “Something that I love about the program that I think would have been really fun in the original — which we did not do… is the family singing. Writers have rolled in songs that Pa played on his fiddle, and the family is singing along, and they’re doing it beautifully, and this really is the spirit of Laura’s books.”
He added that the show is beautifully produced, saying “there is a lot of good stuff going on here.”
