Source : the age
For many Australians who watched Little House on the Prairie when it first aired here in 1975 on Channel Seven, the show was the very picture of American wholesomeness.
Over nine seasons, we watched as the Ingalls family struggled and thrived on the Minnesota plains in the late 1800s, facing tragedy and triumph with an unyielding faith that life would turn out OK. And even though the story was told from the perspective of eight-year-old Laura (Melissa Gilbert), Charles Ingalls (played by Michael Landon) was a dominant figure, one who appealed to audiences for his portrayal of a good husband and father and, yes, for his luscious 1970s hair.
Fast-forward 50 years, though, and that all-American guy is now played by an Australian, Luke Bracey. Come again?
“I was like, ‘Why not an American?’” says Bracey, who cut his teeth on Home and Away before heading to Hollywood, where he starred in the 2015 Point Break remake. Australian projects Elvis and The Artful Dodger are also on his CV.
“And she [showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine] said, ‘I just always knew we’d pick an Australian’, and I was like, ‘Oh, why?’ and she goes, ‘I just thought we’d pick an Australian, and you were the one.’ Maybe Rebecca has a kind of romantic notion of us Australian men. I’m not sure, but hopefully I’ve done it justice.”
So, does Sonnenshine have a “romantic notion” of Australian men?
“I feel like there’s a quality that Australians have that is very down to earth,” she says over Zoom from her office in Winnipeg, Canada, where she is preparing to film season two. “It’s kind of charming, like I feel like they [Australians] could live on the prairie. There’s just something very rugged about [them].”
Come on, it was the hair, wasn’t it?
“He does have great hair, it’s true, and he’s got a great beard,” admits Sonnenshine. “Those are the superficial things about him. He’s so charismatic on camera, but it really was what I saw in his eyes and in his heart.”
For Sonnenshine, the reboot Little House on the Prairie has less to do with the original TV show, which ran from 1974 to 1983, and more to do with her love of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book series, which Sonnenshine devoured as a child.
The books told the story of the Ingalls family as they tried to forge a new life on a farm in Kansas with Ma, Pa and their daughters Mary, Laura, Carrie and Grace. The TV series, however, moved the action to Walnut Grove in Minnesota, and added three adopted children (Albert, James and Cassandra), as well as several new characters and subplots, such as alcoholism, menopause and abuse.
“I really don’t think of it as remaking that show at all,” says Sonnenshine. “Because they did their own wonderful, beautiful thing, and I’m trying to capture the feeling I had when I was a kid of reading these books that were so evocative … I consider these books some of the great pieces of American literature that really deserve to be looked at again.
“The show started 50 years ago, and we haven’t really seen a show tackle the subject again. The great thing about adaptation is that you’re making a conversation between this time in 1869 into the 1870s and today. And when you do that, you start a conversation about how did we get here from there.”
That “how did we get here from there” approach is what set off some critics when the reboot was announced last year. Right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly led the charge, writing on X that she hoped Netflix didn’t “wokeify Little House on the Prairie”, adding “I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.”
Then, from the other side of the culture wars coin, came the argument that Little House on the Prairie will promote conservative values, with its depiction of homesteading and tradwife culture, which in the US has been linked to white Christian nationalism.
Sonnenshine, though, is having none of it.
“I’m expanding upon a story that very much happened,” she says. “There’s always been black Americans living on the prairie, there have always been Native Americans living in our country. They were here first, that’s just a fact.
“I know that not everybody has these memories. A lot of our memories and our ideas are shaped by pop culture, and that’s why I’m saying it’s an exciting time, because now we have the opportunity to open it up. It’s really about people, it’s really about families. It’s a coming-of-age story about a couple of different families.
“The only modernisation in it is just opening up the world to those possibilities that weren’t there before. All these people really existed. So I think it’s a great opportunity to know the hearts of other people that maybe we haven’t gotten to see on camera before.”
One of those people is Dr George Tann, a real-life black doctor who appeared in the books (and delivered baby Carrie), but who was replaced with a fictionalised white doctor, Doc Baker (played by Kevin Baker), in the TV series. In this reboot, Tann (played by Jocko Sims) has been reinstated. The reboot also provides a more nuanced portrayal of Native Americans, whereas the original series was heavily criticised for its depiction of the Osage people (the Wilders were, in fact, illegal squatters on Osage land).
“We get to really know who the Osage were,” says Sonnenshine. “They’re not the others in this show; they are their families, their mothers, their brothers, their daughters. We get to see black Americans living on the prairie in the post-Civil War era. So we really have the opportunity now to tell all those stories in a way that you couldn’t do in the past for a variety of reasons.”
Bracey, equally, has no time for the arguments against the show. Saying, if anything, the reboot is more relevant now because it shows life has always been hard and that family and perseverance are what will get you through those tough times.
“Laura Ingalls Wilder, she wrote these books in 1935 right at the wake of the Great Depression, to show that her family went through tough times 70 years before that,” says Bracey. “And I think a lot of people are feeling bombarded by the world, in all the things, not just [with the] news. Life’s difficult, and the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder is that it’s always difficult. Life is always hard. It was never better back then.
“It’s always had its ups and downs, and its difficulties, and people always had to overcome them, and they always had to try and be good. And the great thing about the Ingalls family is they’re trying to overcome them and be good people at the same time. They’re not trying to take shortcuts; they’re trying to be true to their character.”
Bracey, 38, had never watched the original show and had no real “frame of reference” for the story of Charles and his wife, Caroline, (played by Crosby Fitzgerald) and their two eldest daughters, Mary (Skywalker Hughes) and Laura (Alice Halsey).
That lack of knowledge, however, was liberating, he says, as it allowed him to craft a character that was not reliant on what had come before.
“A lot of the pressure was taken off,” he says. “Because all the bits of the puzzle were all so perfectly placed – the writing, the production design, the costumes, the other actors – everything was all there.
“I just knew that I had to come in, and if I did my job, the puzzle would all fit together well. And I really feel like it has. I’m so proud of this show, I’m really humbled, and so proud that I got to tell this story. I’ve grown to love this family and this character.”
So, does Bracey think he is the rugged, outdoorsy Australian that Sonnenshine imagined? Could he have survived on the American frontier in the 1890s?
“Look, hopefully I’d survive,” he says. “But it was such a difficult thing. There were a couple of books that Crosby, who plays my wife, and I were reading while we were making it. There was this one called Prairie Women, and we’d play a fun game on set where we’d just flick to any page and read it, and every page was, ‘And it didn’t rain again for three years and Pa never smiled again’, and then we flipped to another one, and it was, ‘They left the dance, but Sally was run over by a horse, and Ma never smiled again.’
“Every day was a challenge, right? There were so many things that were lining up against people. So, look, I’d like to think that I’d survive and go well, but it was a real gamble and a real lucky dip. These people who went out and did that were brave, and they deserve a lot of credit for trying to make a better life for their family.”
Little House on the Prairie streams on Netflix from July 9.
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