Melissa Gilbert is speaking out about the age difference between her and her co-star Dean Butler on the set of their series Little House on the Prairie, which began airing in 1974 on NBC.
If you don’t know, Melissa portrayed Laura Ingalls while Dean portrayed her on-screen love interest. There is an 8 year age gap between them, but this is significant because at the time their characters met in season six, Dean was 23 and Melissa was 15. They did share an on-screen kiss.
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In a post, Melissa began, “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. And this is some of what I found…and now, at this age, at this time, I am actually nauseated. 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. Through the lens of today, this is shocking. I have no words other than to say, ‘I WAS A CHILD.’ ‘I WAS FIFTEEN.’ And I was the good news.”
She continued, “Thank God my mom and [co-star/director Michael Landon] and so many others were there to make sure I was safe. Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all? I am so fortunate (Sort of). Many other young women aren’t.”
She concluded her post with a final note: “@megynkelly you need to be careful with your words.” This likely is referring to Megyn Kelly‘s viral comments about Epstein. Megyn shocked viewers by seemingly trying to downplay the nature of Epstein‘s crimes by saying that he was into 15-year-olds, not eight-year-olds.