Melissa Gilbert on Finding Out She Was Cast in Little House on the Prairie

Melissa Gilbert didn’t approach her Little House on the Prairie audition the way other young actresses did.

Appearing on Hey Dude… The 90s Called!, a podcast hosted by Christine Taylor and David Lasher, Gilbert, 61, opened up about what she remembers from when she auditioned for her role in the film, which made way for the beloved series, which ran from 1974 to 1983.

“I was probably around … I was 9 when we shot the pilot. So I was probably around 8½, somewhere in there, maybe a little older when I had auditioned,” she shared.

The audition came while Gilbert was feeling down after she was rejected for a role in the remake of A Miracle on 34th Street, a part she really wanted.

“I was really sad and I remember my dad … I was sitting in the garage. My dad used to build furniture when he wasn’t on the road, when he wasn’t working. So I was in his tool shop and he said to me, ‘Listen, just because you didn’t get this, it’s okay. It just means something better is gonna come along.’ ”

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She continued, “I remember crying and saying, ‘There’s nothing better! What’s better?’ And two weeks later, Little House on the Prairie.”

The audition process was competitive for the project overall. Gilbert recalled it as “one of those ‘Come one, come all,’ type of things.”

“My mom was really smart about this stuff. When I auditioned, there was no primping. She left me alone. I’d get the sides for whatever it was, and we’d read them just to make sure I knew them. But there was no coaching. The only thing she ever told me was to listen. That’s all, to listen to whoever I was acting across from.”

She continued, “I would change into my audition uniform, which was just overalls and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes. And whatever dirt was on my face at that time or food or whatever, it was just left there. My mom would throw my hair into pigtails and then I’d just go in and sit on the floor and do my homework until they called me in.”

“That’s what happened with the Little House audition. The first audition, it was like a room full of girls with their moms primping and making barrel curls on their fingers, you know, and straightening their pinafores,” she added. “And I came in all raggedy and dirty and messy. It worked.”

Gilbert found out that she landed the role “unconventionally,” from none other than Michael Landon’s daughter, Leslie.

“I was at school one day and I was in the lunch area and this girl in an upper grade walked over to me and she said, ‘Are you Melissa?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And she said, ‘I’m Leslie Landon. And my dad says you’re gonna be Half Pint.’ ”

Leslie found out the news at family dinner the night prior, “When Michael was like, ‘We found our Laura.’ ” Hearing it from Landon’s daughter made Gilbert feel confident it was the real deal. She instantly figured out how to tell her mom.

“There were no cell phones, obviously, back then. So I run screaming to the office and tell them I have to call my mom immediately,” she recalled.

“My agents didn’t know yet. My mom didn’t know yet. Leslie got in so much trouble. We’ve been really close friends ever since that day … That was just the beginning of a friendship that was filled with a lot of misadventures and adventures too for, now 50 years or more.”