Butler tells PEOPLE about his experience filming with Gilbert, who was 15 while he was 23 at the time of their first on-screen kiss\n
If Dean Butler could change one thing about his time filming Little House on the Prairie, it might be the age difference with costar Melissa Gilbert.\n
The actor, 67, explained to PEOPLE at the Little House on the Prairie 50th Anniversary Cast Reunion and Festival in March why their age disparity was somewhat of a barrier. When Almanzo (Butler) met Laura (Gilbert) in the season 6 episode \u201cBack to School (Part 1),\u201d Butler was 23 while Gilbert was just 15. Their characters would share their first onscreen kiss in the episode \u201cSweet Sixteen,\u201d which aired later that season.\n
\u201cWhen I met Melissa in \u2018Back to School,\u2019 there was no sign of a woman there. She really was a little girl: bright, incredibly capable, spunky, vibrant, very extroverted,\u201d he says, adding, \u201cNow, I don’t know how much more of a woman there was there at the end, but she was being asked to go there at the end of that season. And I think she did it amazingly well when you look at how little life experience she had.\u201d\n
Butler recalls the nervousness both actors felt when they filmed their kissing scene in \u201cSweet Sixteen,\u201d which takes place during a quiet moment at the local dance.\n
\u201cI think that there was anxiety on both sides of that kiss and how is this going to go? But we stepped up to it,\u201d he continued. \u201cI’ve often said to Melissa, \u2018I wish we could have been a little closer in age when we were doing this.\u2019 But that’s not the way it really happened. Laura was 10 years younger than Almanzo. But from the perspective of playing it, I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have [had] \u2026 a little more common ground, so we would’ve been able to play the loving side of this in perhaps a little bit more interesting way.\u201d\n
Regardless, the scene proved to be a very tender moment that resonated with viewers and tapped into several of Little House\u2019s themes, including love and innocence.\n
\u201cI look at this saying, \u2018Oh boy, we really were pretty simple with all this,\u2019 but it was beautiful [and] simple. It was heartfelt [and] simple. It was sort of storybook simple. And I think that’s one of the reasons why people continue to love this, because it gives you this idyllic view of what a romance could be, what young love could be,\u201d Butler says, adding, \u201cBecause the audience loved her [Laura] so much \u2026 If she’d chosen this guy, then this guy must be really good. And so I got the benefit of a lot of all of that. The audience just came right with me, because she did.\u201d\n
Because of his portrayal of Almanzo, Butler finds he’s still approached by viewers decades later who tell him he was their first celebrity crush.\n
“We all have those people, and to be one of those people for so many young women is really incredibly touching to me. It’s gratifying,” he says, adding, “I want people to walk away from an encounter with me feeling like they’ve gotten what they hope to see. Older, a little more of me than there was then, but that they’re getting the essential truth of what I brought then, and they’re seeing the same thing now. That’s really important to me.”\n
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\ninterest stories.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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