'Little House on the Prairie' Actor Defends Kiss With Teen Melissa Gilbert Despite Their Age Gap: 'The Moms Were Worried'

Dean Butler suffered from anxiety after finding out he was going to give his co-star, 15-year-old Melissa Gilbert, her first kiss, both on screen and in real life.

The actor, who played Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie,” has written a new memoir, “Prairie Man,” which details his rise to fame and the age gap scene that still raises eyebrows today.

“You just couldn’t do it today,” the 68-year-old told Fox News Digital. “There would be far too much blowback. It's remarkable that we haven't had more blowback than we have had… But I think it was handled so tastefully that the people… have forgotten the age difference.”

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“I think audiences had been watching Melissa for years and loved her incredibly,” Butler explained. “They wanted to see when she, so honestly and innocently, declared her love for this young man. She fell in love the first time she saw him. The public was ready to accept that.”

Butler was 23 when he was cast in the popular television series, which aired from 1974 to 1983. Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, was “a 15-year-old girl.”

“She was really a little girl,” Butler recalls. “She was very sophisticated in the industry. As an actress, she was very talented. But as a young woman, she was very inexperienced. And I think it was a lot harder for her than it was for me. . . . [And] I don't know of any casting that's like that…our casting had an age gap of 15 to 23 years.

According to Butler, the characters in the original book series were supposed to have a 10-year age difference. He noted that Gilbert had “complete trust” in his father, who carefully supervised the scene.

“Melissa had a very strong relationship in her life, the one she had with Michael Landon,” Butler said. “When Michael told her, 'He's the man for you,' she was ready to put aside all her anxieties and go for it. And Michael never cheated on anyone on the show. He really understood everything. He knew what he was doing. He believed very strongly in his creative instinct. He was convinced it would work. »

“I'm really grateful that I was the person he could trust with that,” Butler added.

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Still, Butler and Gilbert had to overcome their fears to try to bring the scene to life.

“I think a lot of young actresses might have buckled under the pressure,” Butler said. “Melissa had no experience. She had never been on a date. She had never kissed anyone. She had never done anything like this. All this was still before her. So asking her to take the plunge when she had no real-life experience? This speaks volumes about Melissa's courage and determination. She simply did it. She put all her anxieties aside and went for it. She knew what she had to do to be the Laura she was supposed to be. »

“My job was to make it as easy as possible for him by truly being the gentleman I was raised to be,” Butler continued. “There hasn't been a casting like the one they did with us since then. This casting simply could never happen today. Certainly not on a mainstream television show.”

The couple smooched in the episode titled “Sweet Sixteen.” Butler wrote that nearly 100 people surrounded them on set, but it was one person who broke down in tears: Gilbert's mother, Barbara Abeles.

“I felt that Barbara was not fully supportive of my presence on the show,” Butler wrote. “Her discontent culminated, perhaps, in the fact that she could not bear to see me kiss her daughter. It was a protective discontent; Barbara knew her daughter. I didn't know her, and in a way, I'm glad I did. »

Even though the scene was “beautifully staged,” Abeles wouldn't be the only one to have reservations about the script. Butler explained that shortly after he was chosen, an August 1979 article in the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain made a “disturbing prediction.”

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“Dean Butler has perhaps the trickiest role of the 1979-80 television season. He must convince viewers of the hit series “Little House on the Prairie” that it's okay for a grown man to fall in love with a pubescent girl.”

Butler attempted to clarify matters, telling a reporter, “I think this is going to be handled very cautiously.” » He was nevertheless aware that the network was “venturing into risky territory”.

Viewers noticed. Butler described how, after the episode aired, an upset mother wrote to a Midwestern newspaper, calling for casting director Susan Sukman to be “burned alive” for associating Gilbert with “a grown man.” The horrified matriarch asked how she could still convince her daughter to wait for the right moment when such “romantic depravity” was taking place in “Little House.”

“There were letters … and comments about this age difference,” Butler told Fox News Digital. “Mothers were concerned … To see a visibly young Melissa Gilbert with someone much older than her in this romantic relationship was challenging for some people. But I think … people understood the spirit of the show. They understood where it was going. And people who were familiar with the subject matter, who had read the books, knew that there was a 10-year age difference between Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder when they got married.

In her memoir, Gilbert writes that after meeting Butler, she was confronted with “a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger, and even nausea.” She later told Butler in a phone call, “How was I going to do this? You were a man, a grown man with a car and an apartment. I was a very young teenager. I wasn't allowed to wear heels. I was still wearing Mary Janes. I couldn't pierce my ears. I wasn't allowed to shave my legs, and I'd never even been on a date.”

“The biggest problem I had throughout this time was the issue of physical space,” Gilbert said, as quoted by Butler in his book. “I just wasn't ready to have that kind of physical contact with anyone. When it came to sex and physical relationships, I was basically raised by a Puritan. . . . She was an absolute puritan when she talked to me about sex and intimacy. I would try to have these conversations with her, and it inevitably came down to, “Good girls don't do it.” »

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Despite the awkwardness the kiss caused the couple, Butler stressed there were no hard feelings today.

“I think we're now very respectful colleagues to each other,” he explained. “We know we're part of something. We're connected by this experience, having done this. . . . She knows I respect this special moment in her life and her career. . . . We'll always be connected by this experience.

“Melissa is a very accomplished woman,” Butler said. “I’ve always had a great deal of respect for her and what she’s accomplished. . . . She gets that respect from all of us who were a part of ‘Little House.’ The relationship I have with Melissa today is important in my life because of the work we’ve done and how much it means to so many people. She’s good, I’m good, we’re good.”

Today, Butler is getting a different kind of feedback: from fans who now admit he was their first crush.

“It’s incredibly flattering,” he said. “It’s also humbling. I take it very seriously, to be the man they fell in love with. . . . I’m still that person. I’ll always be that person. And I’m happy about that.”