Gilbert played Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second-eldest daughter in the 200-episode span of the original series in the 1970s and 1980s. Wilder was also notably the character based on the 1935 book written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her co-stars included Michael Landon, who played her father.
As the Netflix reboot approaches, Gilbert addressed concerns that it will be a politically correct or woke version while on ABC News’s The View on Tuesday. Talk show host Megyn Kelly issued a warning to the streaming service on X, writing, “If you wokeify Little House on the Prairie I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.”
“I support the project. It’s just different versions of Little Women. It’s another people’s interpretation of a classic story,” Gilbert said. “But when [Kelly] said that, it just shocked me because you have to have watched Little House on the Prairie to understand what you’re talking about. I mean the stories we told—”
“Were woke then!” host Sunny Hostin interrupted, to which Gilbert responded, “Yeah.”
“We were a reflection of what was happening in America 1974 through the lens of 1874, and in a lot of ways, we’re still there,” Gilbert went on. “That was all Michael Landon. He was telling the stories of the time. He was telling the stories of veterans coming home from Vietnam. He was telling stories of racism and chauvinism and antisemitism and nativism … and I do think there’s room in the Little House universe for other interpretations.”
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Netflix has yet to announce an exact release date for its reimagined Little House on the Prairie, announcing only that it will be released in 2025. In the meantime, the original series is available on Peacock’s streaming service.
Survival dramas similar to Little House on the Prairie have seen success on Netflix. American Primeval was a series released late last year centering on the Mormon pioneers who would go on to settle in Utah and establish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Netflix has it among its “most liked” ranking.
