Nellie Oleson was much prissier than her early character foil, Laura Ingalls, on Little House on the Prairie. But she still knew her way around a horse barn. Alison Arngrim the actor, however, did not. In fact, Arngrim had a distinct fear of horses that required her to use a stunt girl anytime Nellie was supposed to be riding a horse.
Alison Arngrim was scared of horses
Little House on the Prairie is a tough show to be on with a fear of horses. According to Arngrim, she’s “very much a city girl.”
“I still can’t ride a horse,” she told Fox. “I was hopeless with the animals and I avoided them… I was terrified of horses actually. Whenever you saw me on a horse, the rest was a stunt girl. If we’re shooting a scene that involved me just sitting on a horse, there would be four guys on the ground holding the horse’s reins so it wouldn’t move. That way I wouldn’t freak out and fall off. They needed to have that horse perfectly still.”
To make matters worse, Arngrim was aware that the horses were aware of her fear, which only made them more skittish.
“I felt bad for the horses because they just know when they have a rider who’s experienced and knows what they’re doing,” she said. “They also know when they have a rider who has no idea. And they don’t like it when you start panicking.”
However, in recent years, Arngrim has actually made a point to try and face her fear of horses.
“I have a friend who took me for horseback riding lessons a few years ago so I can finally get over this fear,” she said. “They got me the slowest horse in the place. It was very relaxed. At least they showed me how to sit and hold the reins correctly so I wouldn’t scare this poor horse.
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Michael Landon also used a stand-in for horse-riding scenes
Michael Landon, who played Charles Ingalls, also sometimes used a stuntman, though for a different reason than Arngrim. Landon often directed Little House on the Prairie episodes, so when he needed to focus on directing duties, he’d use a horse-riding stand-in named Hal Burton. Landon could ride a horse, but he wasn’t a recreational horse rider by any means.
“I ride the horses on the show, but that’s about it,” he said during a 1971 interview with Betty White on Betty White’s Pet Set (Season 1 Episode 23).
Burton also acted as a stand-in for Landon whenever the riding required for the scene was dangerous.
Horseback riding wasn’t the only thing Alison Arngrim faked on ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Nellie rode horses. She also had it out for Laura Ingalls. But Arngrim and Melissa Gilbert were actually quite close in real life.
“It’s funny, I think if you play enemies on set you end up becoming friends,” Arngrim said of her friendship with Gilbert. “We hit it off right away. We had slumber parties. We would visit each other’s houses on weekends — people couldn’t believe it.”
They’re still friends to this day.
“People still assume that we hate each other,” she said. “But we’re very much friends. We text and talk all the time. Some of us stay in touch on social media… The cast has become a family. We check in on each other all the time.”
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