“Little House on the Prairie” stars Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson are charting a new path forward.
The actresses reunited over the weekend and squashed their past beef over 40 years after playing sisters on the NBC drama series.
Gilbert, 61, and Anderson, 63, posed in a group photo taken backstage at Gilbert’s off-Broadway show, “Pen Pals,” in an Instagram post shared on Saturday.
“Worlds collide. Blessings abound. Hearts heal and reunite. Magic happens,” Gilbert wrote. “Last night after @penpalsplay my genius co-star @veannecox had a surprise in the audience. Boy am I glad I didn’t know in advance that the remarkable @blbuckley was there.”
“But I had a secret of my own,” Gilbert continued. “One I’ve been keeping close to my heart for a while now. Reconnection with a sister. Long, healing talks. Lots of reminiscing. Lots of catching up. Lots of laughter and a few tears.”
Gilbert gushed that she’s “so happy” that Anderson is “back in my life,” noting that the former co-stars “share such an important history that no one else on earth truly understands.”
“Just us Ingalls girls,” she said. “The best part is, the past is now just that and we can move forward as the sisters/friends we always wanted to be. What a wonderful Christmas gift.”
Gilbert and Anderson portrayed sisters Laura and Mary Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie,” which ran from 1974 to 1983.
Since the series finale, both actresses have shared details about the less-than-friendly dynamic they had during filming.
“I honestly do not have a lot of memories of the two of us,” Anderson told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution in March 2010.
“We were very, very different,” she added.
During a past interview, Gilbert accused Anderson of being “the boss of me” on the show.
“She took that absolutely seriously. She was two years older than me, which, you know, when you’re nine and 11 is a big deal … She was tough,” said Gilbert. “I mean both off and on camera, but on camera especially.”
Gilbert also recalled, “One of the first episodes … when Ma comes home with fabric and I reach out to touch it. Melissa whacked me so hard and you can see [where] I almost started to laugh and you can see the whole spectrum of emotion on my face.”
“Little House on the Prairie” centered on the Ingalls family who live on a farm in Minnesota in the 1800s. The show also starred Michael Landon, Karen Grassle, Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush, Dean Butler and Richard Bull.
A reboot of the series is in the works at Netflix.
