Dean Butler is looking back at his time in Walnut Grove, Minnesota.
The actor, 69, who starred as Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie,” recalled a moment on set with Michael Landon, who played the show’s patriarch Charles Ingalls.
Landon, who died at age 54 of pancreatic cancer in 1991, was the father of Melissa Gilbert’s Laura Ingalls. The Hollywood vet also served as a producer on the beloved series and directed a handful of episodes.
Butler recounted being thrown across the room by Landon while on the Nov. 12 episode of “The Patrick LabyorSheaux” show, hosted by fellow “Little House” star Patrick Labyorteaux.
Butler was also joined by Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson, Pamela Roylance, who starred as Sarah Carter, Jennifer Donati, who played Baby Rose Wilder, and the children of director and actor Victor French, who played Mr. Edward: Tracy and Victor French.
Labyorteaux, 60, asked his guests to recount a favorite memory with Landon.
“I wanted to test and see how strong Michael was,” Butler joked to his former co-stars. “We’re doing a scene together where I was supposed to go limp when I lunged at a guy and I didn’t. The first time [Landon] said, ‘Go limp.’ I didn’t. The second time he said, ‘Go limp.’ I didn’t.”
By the third go-around, Landon wasn’t having it.
“The third time — this was the test of his strength — he picked me up and threw me across the interior of the barn as he yelled at me, ‘Go limp,’” Butler recalled.
“It was a signature moment. I just remember saying, ‘What the hell?’ as I was flying through the air and landing on the ground and rolling across the barn, and there were a lot of yucks from the crew.”
The “Forever” alum stressed that it was “totally” his “fault” since he was “too pumped” for the scene.
“I got a flight lesson in one of the barns at Big Sky Ranch as Michael launched me across the barn,” Butler quipped.
Arngrim, 63, responded, asking if he did, in fact, go limp after the toss, to which Butler concurred: “The next take was just fine.”
“Little House on the Prairie” ran for nine seasons from 1974 to 1983, with Butler joining the cast in Season 6.
He starred as Laura’s love interest and eventual husband. Gilbert, 61, was 10 years old when she began her nine-season run on the NBC show.
At 15, the “Her Own Rules” alum began working with then-23-year-old Butler.
Now, Gilbert is opening up about their on-screen romance during the Western show.
While clapping back at Megyn Kelly’s recent comments about late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, she reflected on the eight-year age difference between herself and Butler.
“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 images of her younger self.
“And this is some of what I found…and now, at this age, at this time, I am actually nauseated,” she added. “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 penned 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 exclaimed. “And I was the good news.”
Luckily, Gilbert was always “safe” on set thanks to her mother and Landon.
“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 concluded her post with a direct message to Kelly, 54: “@megynkelly you need to be careful with your words.”
Kelly originally made headlines after stating 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.”
Butler has also addressed the age gap between Gilbert and himself.
“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 told People last year.
“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 added.
He also reflected on how they each 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?” Butler recalled. “But we stepped up to it.”
