‘Little House on the Prairie’ Actor Defends Kiss With Teen Melissa Gilbert Despite Their Age Gap: ‘The Moms Were Worried’

Dean Butler suffered anxiety after finding out he would give his co-star, Melissa Gilbert, 15, her first kiss – both on screen and in real life.

The actor, who played Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie,” has written a new memoir, “Prairie Man,” that details his rise to fame and the age-gap scene that still raises eyebrows today.

“You just couldn’t do it today,” the 68-year-old told Fox News Digital. “There would be far too much blowback. It’s remarkable that we haven’t had more blowback than we have had… But I think it was handled so tastefully that the people… have forgotten the age difference.”

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“I think the audience had been watching Melissa for years and loved her incredibly,” Butler explained. “They wanted to see when she, so honestly and innocently, declared her love for this young man. She fell in love the first time she saw him. The audience was ready to accept that.”

Butler was 23 when he appeared on the popular TV show, which aired from 1974 to 1983. Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, was “a 15-year-old.”

“She was really a little girl,” Butler recalls. “She was very sophisticated in the ways of the industry. As an actress, she was very talented. But as a young woman, she was very inexperienced. And I think it was much harder for her than it was for me… (And) I don’t know of any casting that was like that… our casting was a 15- to 23-year age gap.”

According to Butler, the characters in the original series were supposed to have a 10-year age difference. He noted that Gilbert had “complete trust” in his television father, who carefully supervised the scene.

“Melissa had a very strong relationship in her life, the one she had with Michael Landon,” Butler said. “When Michael told her, ‘He’s the man for you,’ she was ready to put aside all her anxieties and go for it. And Michael never cheated on anyone on the show. He really understood everything. He knew what he was doing. He believed very strongly in his creative instinct. He was convinced it would work. »

“I’m really grateful that I was the person he could trust with that,” Butler added.

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Yet Butler and Gilbert had to overcome their fears in an attempt to bring the scene to life.

“I think a lot of young actresses maybe buckled under the pressure,” Butler said. “Melissa had no experience. She’d never been on a date. She’d never kissed anyone. She’d never done anything like that. All of that was still ahead of her. So to ask her to take this on when she had no real experience? That’s a testament to Melissa’s courage and her guts. She did it. She put all of her anxieties aside and stepped up. She knew what she had to do to be the Laura she was supposed to be.

“My job was to make it as easy as possible for him by being the gentleman I was made to be,” Butler continued. “There hasn’t been a casting like they’ve done with us since then. That casting just couldn’t happen today. Certainly not on a mainstream television show.”

The couple smooched in the episode titled “Sweet Sixteen.” Butler wrote that nearly 100 people surrounded them on set, but one person broke down in tears: Gilbert’s mother, Barbara Abeles.

“I felt that Barbara was not fully supportive of my presence on the show,” Butler wrote. “His unhappiness may have culminated in his not being able to bear to see me kiss his daughter. It was a protective discontent; Barbara knew her daughter. I did not know her, and in a way I am glad.”

Even though the scene was “beautifully staged,” Abeles wouldn’t be the only one to have reservations about the script. Butler explained that shortly after his casting, an August 1979 article in the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain made a “disturbing prediction.”

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“Dean Butler has perhaps the trickiest role of the 1979-80 television season. He must convince viewers of the hit series “Little House on the Prairie” that it’s okay for a grown man to fall in love with a pubescent girl.”

Butler attempted to clarify the situation, telling a reporter, “I think the matter will be handled with the utmost caution.” » He was nevertheless aware that the channel was “venturing into risky territory. »

Viewers noticed. Butler described how, after the episode aired, an upset mother wrote to a Midwestern newspaper, calling for casting director Susan Sukman to be “burned alive” for associating Gilbert with “a grown man.” The horrified matriarch asked how she could still convince her daughter to wait for the right moment when such “romantic depravity” was taking place in “Little House.”

“There were letters … and comments about the age difference,” Butler told Fox News Digital. “Mothers were concerned … Seeing a visibly young Melissa Gilbert with someone much older than her in this romantic relationship was challenging for some people. But I think … people understood the spirit of the show. They understood where it was going. And people who were familiar with the subject matter, who had read the books, knew that there was a 10-year age difference between Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder when they got married.

In her memoir, Gilbert writes that after meeting Butler, she was faced with “a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger, and even nausea.” She later told Butler in a phone call, “How was I going to do that?” You were a man, a grown man with a car and an apartment. I was a very young teenager. I wasn’t allowed to wear heels. I still wore Mary Janes. I couldn’t pierce my ears. I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs and I never even had a date.”

“The biggest problem I had during this whole time was the issue of physical space,” Gilbert said, as quoted by Butler in her book. “I just wasn’t ready to have that kind of physical contact with anybody. When it came to sex and physical relationships, I was basically raised by a puritan. . . . She was an absolute puritan when it came to sex and intimacy. I would try to have these conversations with her, and it would inevitably come down to, ‘Good girls don’t do it.’”

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Despite the awkwardness the kiss caused the couple, Butler stressed there were no hard feelings today.

“I think we are now colleagues who are very respectful of each other,” he explained. “We know we are part of something. We are bonded by this experience, by having done this. . . . She knows that I respect this special moment in her life and career. . . . We will always be bonded by this experience. »

“Melissa is a very accomplished woman,” Butler said. “I have always had great respect for her and for what she accomplished. She has the respect of everyone who participated in “Little House on the Prairie.” The relationship I have with Melissa today is important in my life because of the work we have accomplished and what it means to so many people. She is good, I am good, we are good. »

Today, Butler is getting a different kind of feedback: from fans who now admit he was their first crush.

“It’s incredibly flattering,” he said. “It’s also humbling. I take it very seriously, being the guy they fell in love with… I’m still that person. I’ll always be that person. And I’m happy about that.”