TV
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
‘Little House’ star Luke Bracey was ‘terrified’ filming these scenes
“Little House on the Prairie” stars Luke Bracey and Crosby Fitzgerald talk about real wagons, tough rivers, faking the fiddle and rocking the frocks in the Netflix reboot
Bryan AlexanderUSA TODAY
July 9, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET
Before Luke Bracey could step into Charles Ingalls’ boots in “Little House on the Prairie,” the “Point Break” star had to master a key frontier skill: driving a wagon with a two-horse team on the Netflix series
It’s a daunting task in the reboot of the beloved 1970s TV series “Little House on the Prairie” (all eight episodes streaming now), adapted from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic “Little House” books
As Charles “Pa” Ingalls, Bracey is tasked with safely guiding his TV family – wife Caroline “Ma” Ingalls (Crosby Fitzgerald), along with daughters Mary (Skywalker Hughes) and Laura (Alice Halsey) – to the family’s new prairie home in Independence, Kansas, it’s a lot of time, and “Little House” episodes, in the driver’s seat
“I was sufficiently terrified to start with,” Bracey tells USA TODAY. “The people in the wagon were under my direct safety. That was the thrill of it, being able to use the actual wagon with two big horses. There are moments we’re literally riding off into the sunset on a wagon.”
The wagon work is the same issue that bedeviled Faith Hill, whose Margaret Dutton drove in “1883,” the 2021 “Yellowstone” prequel series. “I thought it might be fairly simple. No, it is not,” Hill told USA TODAY. “It’s very dangerous, actually.”
As Hill will attest, the key to wagon-driving success is practice. Both Bracey and Fitzgerald were trained as the designated drivers in the sweeping series shot in Winnipeg, Canada, and other parts of Manitoba
“Although I would’ve liked to have had a longer wagon-driving certification process,” says Bracey. “But time is time.”
‘Little House’ opens with treacherous river crossing
It wouldn’t really be a wagon series unless there was a dangerous river crossing. “Little House” opens in Episode 1 with the family navigating a fast-current crossing that sends Pa into the water to free the stuck wagon, Ma into the driver’s seat and the family’s dog Jack swimming down the river
The harrowing river-crossing shoot, which lasted three days, was the first “Little House” scene, shot on location in Manitoba’s Whitemouth Falls Provincial Park and in a specially built 144,000-gallon tank of warm water, with added pumps to create swirling water
“We literally had to take a little boat to get to the wagon in the middle of this tank,” says Fitzgerald. “Real horses were brought into the tank, Luke was swimming in the tank. It was all happening.”
During the tense moments, the stuck wagon is rocked with hydraulics, forcing Fitzgerald to clutch the reins
“That struggling wasn’t fake,” says Fitzgerald. “I was hanging on to keep from falling in the tank.”
The scene of Ma finally riding the horses onto the shoreline was Fitzgerald’s final proof of wagon-driving prowess
“I didn’t know this job would entail so many stunt dreams coming true,” the “Palm Royale” actress says
Did Luke Bracey learn Pa’s ‘Little House’ fiddle?
While the trained actors would be welcome to lead any wagon train, they won’t be joining any frontier bands anytime soon. Bracey never learned to play the fiddle that Pa pulls out often, even to entertain the family
“I had grand dreams when I got the job that I’d play the fiddle,” says Bracey. “But I learned that two and a half weeks [of prep] was not enough time to really learn the fiddle.”
Instead, the “Little House” music consultant, Jeremy Penner, incorporated a new skill – teaching an actor how to pretend to play the fiddle
“We had this trial-and-error thing for each scene, how to make the fiddling look as real as possible,” says Bracey. “We’d figure out what the bow strokes were. As long as I had the bow in the right place in the right tempo and right technique, it worked.”
Faking fiddle well was crucial to the character
“It played on my mind often in Season 1,” says Bracey, who has joined the cast on set shooting Season 2. “I kept hearing, ‘You’ve got two more songs on this next episode.’ But I feel so much more comfortable with it now.”
How do the Ingalls get those stunning ‘Little House’ dresses?
The Ingalls family lives humbly on the wagon, and when they settle in the frontier town of Independence. Even with constant frontier money problems, the Ingalls women boast an array of stunning dresses (Pa has a pretty limited supply of grey-ish shirts under his overalls)
How are the historically accurate frocks, suitable for a “Country Living” photo spread, possible?
“Ma is an amazing seamstress,” says Fitzgerald. “The fabrics are the cheapest fabrics they could find, cotton that would have been on sale or from tablecloths. It actually would be pretty realistic to sew these things for the family.”
