‘Little House’ Stars Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim Have the Sweetest Friendship in Real Life
Find out how the on-screen enemies became the closest of friends off-camera
Sometimes things aren’t always as they seem on the small screen and that’s exactly how it was for Little House on the Prairie stars Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim. Although they spent nine years portraying mortal enemies, pranking one another and even pushing each other down (literally and figuratively), the girls who starred as Nellie and Laura formed a tight bond behind the scenes.
Spending time together on set bonded the actresses for life, even though it didn’t seem that way on-screen. Nellie (Arngrim) and Laura (Gilbert) were definitely nowhere near being friends, but they did grow closer while acting like they hated one another.
Melissa Gilbert dishes on her friendship with Alison Arngrim
The actresses have stayed close in the years since the series came to an end and they’ve only had sweet things to say about each other.
“Alison and I formed an instant bond when we were kids, and she and I text pretty much on the regular,” Gilbert shared.
Arngrim, too, had only kind words for one of her oldest friends, sharing that distance and responsibilities haven’t gotten in the way of their friendship.
“We’re still a lot the same,” says Alison. “We got older, but we still laugh at the same terrible things. Melissa’s just a doll and, yeah, we really haven’t changed much at all.”
Melissa Gilbert and Alison Arngrim were ‘like sisters’
It’s hard to imagine Nellie and Laura ever truly getting along, especially since Nellie often did anything she could to put Laura down. But the actress behind Nellie says that wasn’t the case in real life at all. Arngrim recalled their relationship during the show’s 50th reunion.
“Here’s Melissa Gilbert and I playing mortal enemies, beating each other senseless all week,” Arngrim shared. “And then on the weekends, we’d go to each other’s house for a slumber party, and we were hanging out.”
The actress even added that the two were “like sisters” and that “It’s so completely bonkers.”
What it was like to play Nellie—not a well-liked character
Melissa Gilbert and her character, Laura Ingalls Wilder, instantly became America’s sweetheart when she joined Little House on the Prairie at age 10. Portraying the kindhearted, adorable young girl made Gilbert a staple in American pop culture and nearly everyone knew her name.
The same, however, can not be said for Arngrim. While she, too, starred alongside Gilbert in the iconic western drama, her character was not nearly as well-liked, and she didn’t have the same experience as her friend. Considering Nellie was Laura’s nemesis on-screen, fans didn’t quite take to her character in the same way.
“People hated me,” Arngrim explained of her time playing the character. “They hated me, hated me.” She added that someone once threw a cup of orange soda in her face. “But what struck me about it, and all the times that people attack me, I was, like, ‘What am I doing that they are so convinced this is real, that they’re just losing it?’”
Despite their on-screen feuds, Gilbert and Arngrim have stayed close, and over the years fans have (hopefully) gotten used to the fact that they were simply playing characters.
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