Dean Butler Says Modern Audiences Would Reject 'Little House On The Prairie' Romance

For legions of viewers, “Little House on the Prairie” was must-see television from the mid-1970s to the early ’80s. However, actor Dean Butler believes there’s one major aspect of the show that wouldn’t make the cut by modern standards.

In his new memoir “Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond,” Butler opens up about being cast as Almanzo Wilder on the show’s sixth season when he was 23 years old. Co-star Melissa Gilbert, who played Almanzo’s love interest, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was just 15.

Though audiences at the time seemingly overlooked the age gap between the characters at the time “Little House on the Prairie” was on the air, Butler doesn’t think that would be the case in 2024.

“You just couldn’t do it today,” he told Fox News Digital in an interview published Sunday. “There would be way too much blowback. It’s remarkable that we didn’t get more blowback than we did… But I think it was handled so tastefully that people… forgot about the age difference.”

“There’s been no casting pairing like what they did with us since then,” he added. “That casting could simply never happen today. Certainly not on a mainstream television show.”

One of the reasons Butler believes the eight years between Almanzo and Laura didn’t cause more of a stir is because Gilbert had been such an endearing presence on the show since its debut season in 1974. In fact, the age difference between Almanzo and Laura in the “Little House on the Prairie” book series, written by the real-life Ingalls Wilder, was a full 10 years.

“I think the audience had been watching Melissa for years and loved her incredibly,” said Butler, who joined the “Prairie” cast in 1979. “They wanted to see when she, so honestly and innocently, declared her love for this