Feeling nostalgic for the original Little House on the Prairie TV series? Keep your eyes on the woods in Episode 2 of Netflix’s new Little House on the Prairie, and you’ll spot a familiar face. Alison Arngrim, who spent seven seasons making Nellie Oleson the ultimate villain we all loved to hate, is nearly unrecognizable as a ragged drifter who welcomes a lost Laura and Mary to her campfire with a warmth that quickly cools to something rather terrifying.
A new character on the prairie
It’s a very different energy from Nellie, the ringleted menace of Walnut Grove, and Arngrim wholeheartedly embraces this new character who will certainly never be caught wearing anything like the fancy dresses Nellie always wore. The actress is delighted by the comparisons fans have been making to another character from the original series.
“Seven years as Nellie, and the best comparisons I’m getting for my new character are ‘Kezia’ gone wrong!” Arngrim tells me with a laugh. She’s referring to Kezia Horn, the eccentric but kindhearted Walnut Grove outsider played in the original series by Hermione Baddeley.
A nod to the Bloody Benders?
The cameo may carry a darker layer, too. Arngrim suspects the scene contains “a possible insider historical reference to the Bender family, aka ‘the Bloody Benders,’ a very real serial killer family who lived in Kansas around the same time as the Ingalls,” she says. “They are referred to in Laura’s writings.”
I was intrigued and decided to do a brief dive into the prairie history. According to the Library of Congress blog, The Benders, who are sometimes called America’s first serial killer family, opened their homestead as a place where travelers could get supplies and have a place to stay for the night. They lived in southeastern Kansas in the early 1870s, not far from where the real Ingalls family homesteaded near Independence, which is the setting of the new series. Travelers who stopped in for a meal had a way of never being seen again; when the family’s crimes were uncovered in 1873, searchers found roughly a dozen victims, most bludgeoned and buried in the property’s garden. The Benders fled before they could be caught and were never found or brought to justice.
The scene with Alison Arngrim plays out during Episode 2’s storyline about John Edwards (Warren Christie), the lonely Tennessee veteran who helps the Ingalls family raise their little house. When Edwards disappears after a falling-out with Caroline, Laura and Mary go looking for him. They then wander straight into Arngrim’s unnervingly friendly camp. Something’s not quite right, though.
What Michael Landon would have thought
Alison Arngrim is a fan of the new take, and she suspects the man who created the original Little House on the Prairie TV show would have been, too. Asked what Michael Landon, who produced, directed, and starred as Charles “Pa” Ingalls in the original NBC series, she said, “I think Michael would have loved the actors, especially Warren Christie as Mr. Edwards, but maybe I’m biased, I’m a fan,” she says, then jokes. “I don’t know that he’d really dislike anything about this one, but he’d probably have Pa take his shirt off more often!” (Michael Landon’s character Charles Ingalls famously and frequently took his shirt off while doing some of the more strenuous farm work.)
Passing the curls to a new Nellie
Alison Arngrim’s praise for Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie is a fitting blessing from prairie royalty. And while the mischievous character Nellie Oleson (Willa Dunn) herself won’t turn up until the already-renewed Season 2, Arngrim’s cameo makes one thing clear: the new Little House knows exactly whose wagon tracks it’s following.
Arngrim is keeping very busy beyond the prairie, too. She performs her very popular (and hilarious) stage show throughout the United States and also in France, and she will next bring the show to Malone, New York, in late July as part of the Wilder Days: Almanzo’s Little House Cast Reunion. You can check out her many upcoming appearances on the Alison Arngrim website.
Thank you for reading. The first season of the new Little House on the Prairie is now streaming on Netflix.
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Robin Raven Creator
Robin Raven is a journalist who covers travel, entertainment, health, wellness and more. You can often find her writing songs, flying somewhere she’s never been, reading and listening to Taylor Swift.
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