Alison Arngrim is back on the prairie.
The actress who made Nellie Oleson one of television’s most unforgettable villains returns with a surprise cameo in Netflix’s new “Little House on the Prairie” reboot, now streaming.
Although she hasn’t met Willa Dunn, the child actress taking over the iconic role, Arngrim already has some hard-earned advice on how to perfect the art of playing the girl everyone loves to hate.
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“You’ve got to have a solid sense of who you are,” the actress told Fox News Digital. “It’s a tall order for someone who’s like 10, 11 or 12 years old, but when people are talking about this other person who lived in the 1800s, saying, ‘I hate her so much. She’s so awful. I can’t stand her. I want to slap her in the face,’ you can’t take that personally.”
“You cannot think it’s real — that people want to slap you in the face or that you did something wrong. It’s actually a compliment. It means you’re doing it right.”
“Remember, Sir Anthony Hopkins didn’t lose sleep over being Hannibal Lecter,” she said. “You are who you are, and this is just a character. You have to understand the job is to irritate, annoy and upset people. And if you do it correctly with a character like Nellie, people are going to be annoyed. But when someone says, ‘I can’t stand her,’ you can’t possibly take that in.”
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Arngrim was more than ready to become a despised villain. Raised in a family of actors and performing since she was 5 years old, she viewed every “I hate you” from fans as the ultimate applause.
“I’ve had people come up to me and go, ‘You were a complete b—-, and I hated you. You were absolutely hideous and revolting. I was terrified of you,'” she said with a laugh. “I just said, ‘Oh my God, thank you so much. You’re too kind.’ It’s a weird thing, but you have to understand the character has nothing to do with you. It’s someone who has nothing to do with you.”
And fans haven’t let her forget it.
“I still remember when someone threw a McDonald’s cup of orange soda at my face during a Christmas parade,” she said. “I think people are a little more sane today, or they understand fantasy a little better now.”
Arngrim has no regrets about playing television’s most infamous bully.
“I got the joke,” she said. “I knew you were supposed to hate me, and I was fine with it. But it’s really weird because I’m 64 years old, and I still have people yelling at me about all the things I did to Laura 52 years ago. Some people are still really mad, and that’s very bizarre. So I will tell the new Nellie to brace herself. But she also has to understand that if she does it right, people will absolutely hate her. And if she really does it right, they’ll love her too.”
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Arngrim was asked to make her cameo about two weeks before production was set to film her scene.
“I play this very strange woman in the woods,” she said. “I used to have Marilyn Monroe’s makeup guy every morning, who made sure we looked really nice. But when I first sat down in the makeup chair this time around, the makeup artist said, ‘We’re going to make you look so awful. I feel bad. You have such amazing skin. I’m going to totally ruin that.'”
“They ruined everything,” she said with a laugh. “They painted my teeth — my dentist is going to be horrified. They used colors like blood, tobacco and dirt.”
Arngrim said that if original showrunner Michael Landon were alive, he would be “fascinated” by the new technology available in Hollywood today to help bring the “Little House” stories to life.
“I also think he would have Pa take off his shirt more often,” she joked.
“But Michael somehow knew that ‘Little House’ would stand the test of time,” she said. “He used to tell everyone on set that everyone’s going to be watching this after we’re all gone. He predicted that. And here we are. I think he would be so impressed that the show is being retold again. I also think he would want to direct every single episode, and he would have lots to say because he was very picky.”
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Today, Arngrim hopes she’ll soon meet the new Nellie. She’s also urging skeptical fans to give Netflix’s reboot a chance.
“How many ‘Star Treks’ do we have now?” she said. “A lot. And remember, when our show first aired, some people said, ‘No, it can only be the books.’ These actors get it. The cast is fabulous.”
“There’s just something special about these stories,” Arngrim said. “If I close my eyes, I can hear Michael laughing, with his high-pitched giggle. Who would have thought ‘Little House’ would still be around today? Well, Michael did. ‘Little House’ is never going away.”
