Melissa Gilbert has a new perspective about her “Little House on the Prairie” experience.
While clapping back at Megyn Kelly’s recent comments about late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the 61-year-old actress reflected on the 8-year age difference between herself and Dean Butler, who played her onscreen love interest in the NBC series.
“So, I debated posting this but, I feel compelled to share. After seeing many women’s posts with the hashtags #iwasfifteen #imfifteen #iwasachild, I decided to google search myself at that age and see what came up,” Gilbert wrote on Instagram on Saturday, alongside photos of her younger self.
“And this is some of what I found…and now, at this age, at this time, I am actually nauseated,” the actress continued. “The girl on vacation in Hawaii with her family, is the same girl who was expected to ‘fall in love with’ and kiss a man on film who was several years older than she was.”
Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls Wilder on the 1970s/1980s TV program, explained that “through the lens of today, this is shocking.”
“I have no words other than to say, ‘I WAS A CHILD.’ ‘I WAS FIFTEEN,’” she added. “And I was the good news.”
However, Gilbert noted that she was always “safe” on the show’s set thanks to her mother and her co-star Michael Landon, who portrayed her onscreen father.
“Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all?” she wrote. “I am so fortunate (Sort of). Many other young women aren’t.”
Gilbert ended her message with a stern warning to Kelly, 54: “@megynkelly you need to be careful with your words.”
Kelly recently made controversial comments about Epstein’s pedophile behavior on her SiriusXM show. “He liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds.” she said.
“But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby,” Kelly continued. “There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
Kelly’s remarks sparked the #iWasFifteen hashtag trend where women — like Gilbert — are sharing photos of themselves when they were 15.
Gilbert was 10 years old when she started her nine-season run on “Little House on the Prairie.” At age 15, Gilbert began working with then-23-year-old Butler, who played Laura’s eventual husband, Almanzo Wilder.
Butler, now 69, spoke to People last year about the pair’s age difference during their time on the show.
“I’ve often said to Melissa, ‘I wish we could have been a little closer in age when we were doing this.’ But that’s not the way it really happened,” the actor said. “Laura was 10 years younger than Almanzo. But from the perspective of playing it, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have [had] … a little more common ground, so we would’ve been able to play the loving side of this in perhaps a little bit more interesting way.”
Butler also reflected on how the stars felt about their first kissing scene.
“I think that there was anxiety on both sides of that kiss and how is this going to go?” he recalled. “But we stepped up to it.”
