If the rivalry between Nellie Oleson and Laura Ingalls was created from scratch by the screenwriters of Little House on the Prairie, we can say that the one between the interpreters of Nellie and Mary Ingalls existed well behind the scenes.
In his book Confessions of a prairie bitch : how I survived Nellie Oleson and learned to love being hatedAlison Arngrim (Nellie) wrote about Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary Ingalls): “I tried to be nice…but it became a zen exercise. Waiting for a response from her was like waiting to hear one person clap. I [la saluais toujours le matin]which was most of the time greeted with an icy stare or a sort of mumbled 'uhuh' between breaths. Sometimes it was less than that: she didn't even look up from what she was reading.”
But things are better today!
Recently invited to the show Chez Jordan (via Leisure TV), Alison Arngrim still wanted, with hindsight, to provide clarifications to these previous statements:
It's true that I was little, I was 12, and I was a teenager, and so was she. There were difficulties between us. We had very different personalities. Now, 50 years later, things are much better.
The two actresses actually met again at the last Monte-Carlo Festival, where they were finally able to make peace. It must be said, in her defense, that Melissa Sue Anderson's life was not rosy on the set. His mother was extremely possessive and isolated him from the rest of the children between takes, which created frustration especially with the interpreter of Laura Ingalls, who confessed that he was “difficult to get along” with the one who played his big sister Mary.
Furthermore, her agent when she got the role of Mary told her that the production wanted her to lose weight. Response from the interested party: “I obviously said yes. I learned afterwards that they found me too healthy to play a pioneer. That was the case, I had a very round face… I lost those kilos but that made me anxious for years for these reasons.”
The actress will still play Mary Ingalls for 7 seasons and the start of the eighth, before leaving the series: “To be completely honest, I don't even remember my last day of filming. I had reached the end, I had played everything I had to play as a blind woman. I mostly remember to have been torn between 'I don't want this to end' and 'I have to move on' but I only want to remember the good moments of this experience”.
Original article published on AlloCiné
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