The set of “Little House on the Prairie” was filled with drinking, smoking and “insane” parties, according to former star Alison Arngrim.
Arngrim, who played child bully Nellie Olson on the iconic TV series, said on the “Here’s What Happened” podcast last week that the show’s “older” staff acted like characters from “Mad Men.”
“They come from a time when everyone was smoking and everyone was drinking, as usual,” the actress explained. “There were no health foods, no vegetarian options, no gluten-free muffins.”
She added, “The prop guys were in charge of the booze and cigarettes and candy, so they all hung out in front of the truck.”
Arngrim, now 64, clarified that none of the child actors smoked on set.
However, she said that some of her adult co-stars, including Michael Landon, were “swigging Marlboros all over the place” with the staff and were “drinking several cases” of beer each day.
Arngrim also claimed that Landon, who played the show’s patriarch Charles Ingalls, “was drinking a lot of whatever he was drinking that day,” usually whiskey.
Despite this, Arngrim claimed that “no one was drunk on set.”
“They were burning it down and stuff, because they were on ladders and hanging lights and I was like, ‘I know they live on beer,'” she shared.
Arngrim also said that if the crew was “running low” on beer, they would send someone to replenish it.
“We had a whole bar in our prop truck, and every day after work we put boards on a couple of sawhorses and set it up like a bar and started drinking in earnest,” she recalled.
Arngrim said the crew also held an “insane” Christmas party and wrap party where everyone had a designated driver.
Arngrim said he couldn’t believe the crew was “still awake” to party after drinking so much.
“Their generosity was God knows what,” she said. “Because they were coming out of the drinking and smoking ’50s. They didn’t think this was weird.”
Based on the popular novel series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie is a story about the Ingalls family, a frontiersman living on the frontier in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.
The series, which ran for nine seasons on NBC from 1974 to 1983, was marred by multiple scandals, including Landon’s affair with teenage stand-in actress Cindy Clerico and a decades-long feud between stars Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson.
The Little House on the Prairie reboot series with a new cast premiered on Netflix last week.
