Melissa Gilbert Recalls Age Gap With ‘Little House On The Prairie’ Husband

Melissa Gilbert “Reflect on it”Little house on the meadow“Past yet Megyn KellyJeffrey Epstein’s comments sparked backlash.

While sharing photos of herself at the age of 15, the beloved actress drew attention to the fact that she was a “child” who was expected to film romantic scenes with an older co-star.

Melissa Gilbert’s activism also extends to New York, where she accused a politician of blocking the Ryder Act, a bill to phase out horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.

In a poignant Instagram post shared on Saturday, Gilbert revisited her “Little House on the Prairie” past after Megyn Kelly’s recent statements about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sparked online outrage.

The actress, now 61, said Kelly’s comment made her think about her own experience as a teenager working opposite a much older star, Dean Butler, the actor who played her teenage love interest in the classic film. nbc series.

Gilbert shared photos of herself when she was 15 years old, explaining that the #iWasFifteen trend followed by women prompted her to search for photos from that time.

“And this is some of what I found…and now, at this age, at this time, I actually feel nauseous,” she said of photos of herself as a child kissing her co-star.

Gilbert noted in her lengthy post that what she saw while looking back at her previous role was a “child” who was expected to “fall in love” and kiss a grown man on television.

Given today’s awareness, Gilbert said the situation seems “shocking.”

“I have no words other than to say: I was a kid.” “I was fifteen years old,” she confirmed. “And you’re good news.”

However, Gilbert admitted that she was lucky to have a protective mother and the support of Michael Landon, who played her father on the show.

“Can you imagine if I didn’t have them all?” I wrote. “I’m very (kind of) lucky. A lot of other young women aren’t.”

She ended her message with a note directed at Kelly: “@megynkelly, you need to be careful with your words.”

The controversy began after Kelly, on her SiriusXM show, called Epstein a “pedophile” but said the severity of the abuse differed when the victims were teenagers.

“We have yet to see anyone come forward and say, ‘I was 10 years old, and I was under 14 years old, when I first came under his purview,'” she said on her SiriusXM show. Newsweek. “There’s a difference between a 10-year-old and a 5-year-old… He’s sick. The whole thing is disgusting.”

Her remarks sparked immediate outrage and helped fuel the #iWasFifteen movement.

In response, thousands of women, including Gilbert, shared photos of themselves at 15 to highlight how young, vulnerable and unambiguously childish they were at the time.

Epstein’s crimes have been well documented. In 2019, a decade after pleading guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution and registering as a sex offender, he was arrested on federal charges of child sex trafficking.

Federal prosecutors said some of his alleged victims were “as young as 14 years old.” A month later, while awaiting trial, he was found dead in his cell in an apparent suicide.

This isn’t the first time Gilbert has backed away from Kelly. In January, after Kelly criticized Netflix’s upcoming reboot of Little House on the Prairie on X.

“If Netflix wakes up with Little House on the Prairie, I will make it my sole mission to completely destroy your project,” the journalist warned at the time.

Gilbert publicly addressed it on Threads, urging the political commentator to reconsider the original series, writing, “Ummm… watch the original again. TV doesn’t get any more ‘woke’ than we do.”

She noted that the show addressed racism, addiction, misogyny, anti-Semitism, spousal abuse, rape and other heavy social issues long before “woke” became a buzzword.