Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Gilbert rarely speaks out these days.
However, Megyn Kelly managed to get under her skin, but she had a knee-jerk reaction and decided to fight back on social media.
The beloved actress shared a post responding to Kelly’s bizarre take on the iconic series, where Kelly expressed concerns about the potential “wokeness” of the remake.
In her usual theatrical ways, Kelly lashed out at the possibility that wokeness would destroy the series’ remake, a view that some found surprising given the progressive themes of the original series.
More than 43 years after the series ended, Netflix has decided to revive it. The former Fox News darling said on X: “If you wokeify Little House on the Prairie, I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.”
Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, responded via Instagram to say: “Apparently Megyn tweeted (I’m not on that platform) asking that Netflix not “woke-ify” their Little House remake. Um, m…watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more “woke” than we did.”
She added: “We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse, and every other “woke” topic you can think of. Thank you very much. Megyn Kelly watches any episode on any streaming platform anywhere in the world. x.”
In an interview with PEOPLE Magazine, Melissa Gilbert shared more details on her decision to call out Megyn Kelly.
She stated that she never planned to speak out but felt an urge to clarify Kelly’s misguided tweet. Melissa Gilbert claimed: “Listen, I wasn’t going to say a word. I wasn’t. Because it’s a separate story, we’re not involved. I think everyone has a right to tell any story they want to in any way they want to, and I think there’s a great deal of room in the Little House universe for multiple stories and multiple points of view.”
Gilbert said she had a problem with Kelly’s big mouth and added: “If it does well when the water rises, all boats float. So I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is that I opened my big fat mouth because someone else opened hers. I merely pointed out the fact that to deny the, and I use air quotes, ‘woke-ism’ of the original series is a huge mistake because the stories we were told were the stories of what was going on in this country in the 1970s through the lens of the 1870s.”
She reminded the world that Michael Landon, the lead actor and director of Little House on the Prairie, was a Republican.
Melissa Gilbert explained added: “That was Michael Landon, a Republican, by the way. I kept picturing what he would do if he was alive today and heard what she said.”
The actress continued: “It’s hyperbole, and it’s damaging, and it’s wrong. I didn’t jump into it for political reasons or anything like that. I just wanted to set the record straight. The fans, largely, I would say, said, ‘Exactly, Little House was that.”
Melissa Gilbert said the show resurged in 2020 because of this country’s social and political unrest. She said: “It opened our eyes to many things that were going on in our world then and now. There’s a reason why it had such a huge resurgence in 2020, and it wasn’t just a pandemic. It was the summer of racial unrest. People were leaning into stories like the Wisdom of Solomon and all of the stories we did about racism and nativism. And I think the show lives on because many of the stories we told are still problems.”
Gilbert said the upcoming revival of the iconic Western series is “a remake, not a reboot.” It will be completely different from the original.
She revealed: “There’s no reason to capture the spirit of the original at all. I’m hoping, and from what I understand, is that the remake will hew closer to the books than we did. There’s a lot of information and beautiful stories to mine from the actual writings of Little House. There’s no reason to go off-roading and adding characters that didn’t exist. Plenty of people in the Little House world still haven’t been talked about on our version of the show. We twisted the true story around quite a bit.”
She will not be in the new Little House universe because she wants the show to focus on a new chapter and generation.
Melissa Gilbert concluded by saying: “That’s a conversation to be had another day, or maybe not. My kneejerk reaction is that I think they should create their own whole universe and maybe not try and cross things over too much or cross the streams as it were.”
The original show was based on the Little House on the Prairie children’s book series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The Western historical drama focused on the Ingalls family, “who lived on a farm on Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota,” from the 1870s to the 1990s.
The series starred Michael Landon, Karen Grassle, Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson, and twins Lindsay and Sydney Greenbush.
Netflix said in a press release: “The new show will be part hopeful family drama, part epic survival tale, and part origin story of the American West. This fresh adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s iconic semi-autobiographical Little House books offers a kaleidoscopic view of the struggles and triumphs of those who shaped the frontier.”
Gilbert is giving Kelly more than she bargained for.
