Netflix‘s new Little House on the Prairie show follows young Laura Ingalls (Alice Halsey) as she travels with her family far from her childhood home in “the big woods” to start life over again in a, yes, little house on the prairie.
Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved book series will quickly recognize the tomboyish Laura, her perfect and prim older sister Mary (Skywalker Hughes), and even the family’s loyal dog, Jack. Two characters that might feel a little different, though, are Ma and Pa Ingalls.
Yes, Little House on the Prairie depicts Charles (Luke Bracey) and Caroline Ingalls (Crosby Fitzgerald) as Laura sees them through her pint-sized eyes — Pa as a rugged hero who can do no wrong and Ma as a brilliant beauty — but we also get glimpses of them as imperfect human beings. Charles is riddled with regrets about how he handled a delicate family situation and doesn’t always make the right calls. Caroline is repeatedly tempted to leave Charles and take the girls back home to the safety of her sisters’ house.
Over the course of Little House on the Prairie‘s first season, we not only get to see Laura and Mary’s perception of their parents change, but their ideas of themselves evolve in turn.
“To me, that’s what made it so fun and so nice to do,” Little House on the Prairie star Crosby Fitzgerald told DECIDER last week. “I like that Caroline is a human who’s flawed and complex. That’s the most fun type of character to play, not just like a stock character of a mother or a wife. She is those things, but sort of multitudinous within those things, and I think that’s what’s exciting to attack.”
“Well, that’s what acting is, you know? Otherwise you’re not playing a human being. But we’re playing human beings and human beings aren’t perfect,” Luke Bracey said. “I mean, I do love that about Charles, is that he makes plenty of mistakes, but he wants to be a good man. He wants to be a good husband and he wants to be a father, a good member of the community, and I admire that in anyone.”
“So to be able to play someone like that — and someone who takes responsibility for times that he’s incorrect and makes mistakes — I think that’s a nice person to play and a good example to live up to and something that I really enjoy doing,” he said.
One aspect of Pa’s character that Netflix’s show carries straight from the books is his musicality. Pa’s fiddle comes out often over the course of Little House on the Prairie‘s first season, with Ma, Mary, and Laura singing along for entertainment. These musical interludes are all over Ingalls Wilder’s books and the songs play an important role in the show.
“This is all they had,” Bracey said. “This was their entertainment. They loved singing as a family. They loved the music.”
“Yeah, this was their TV at the end of the day,” Fitzgerald said.
“It was it,” Bracey said. “And then on top of that, Alice and Skywalker, who play Laura and Mary, all they do is sing all day, every day with their incredible angelic voices, and so having them just singing along and loving music it’s who they are anyway. So, it’s kind of true life. It’s us kind of dancing along and laughing while Alice and Skywalker sing beautiful songs every day.”
One thing about those scenes that’s not true to life? Bracey’s real-life fiddle skills.
“I’m going to lead you on a little secret here,” Bracey admitted, “I still don’t know how to fiddle.”
“I certainly wanted to look as capable as possible. The reality is, there’s no way I could learn how to play fiddle like Pa in three-and-a-half weeks. But one thing I wanted to do, I wanted to get it as close as possible, something I stressed quite a bit about in the first season was, do I actually look like I’m doing this?” he said.
“But I figured out what I needed to do for it to look like I was playing the fiddle. I knew that like the bow strokes were my key and if I could get them in the right spot, I think it would do what we needed to and then on top of that, as you say, it’s the atmosphere of these scenes with the fiddles.”
Overall, both Bracey and Fitzgerald stressed how much of a privilege it was to play Ma and Pa Ingalls in this new take on the classic books.
“Look, to play someone nice in a show that is nice, but that doesn’t shy away from inconvenience, and mistakes, and problems — that’s a real privilege. There’s very few things in the world like that,” Bracey said. “So I love being a part of this show for those reasons, that these people are humans, but they’re trying to be the best humans they can be, and that’s a nice thing to do every day at work.”
Little House on the Prairie Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.