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Netflix introduced a new generation of fans to Little House on the Prairie with the recent release of the streaming service’s highly anticipated reboot — but there are some core differences between the show and the beloved original series.
“With this version, our showrunner and creator, Rebecca Sonnenshine, she’s really gone back to Laura Ingalls Wilder‘s books as the source material,” Luke Bracey, who stars as patriarch “Pa” Charles Ingalls in the new version, began on the Friday, July 24, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark. “All the stories come from there and she says that she wanted to have the show make you feel what you felt when you read the books as a kid.”
Both versions of Little House were adapted from Ingalls Wilder’s iconic, semi-autobiographical books of the same name, chronicling a pioneer family’s move from Wisconsin to Kansas.
“Hopefully, we fit as much [from the books] as we can into the scripts,” Bracey, 37, said on Friday. “That’s probably the main delineation from the original show, but the fact that it’s a family trying to be good people is still the core of it.”
Bracey plays Charles opposite Crosby Fitzgerald’s Caroline Ingalls, who are the parents of Mary (Skywalker Hughes) and Laura (Alice Halsey).
The original series, meanwhile, aired from 1974 to 1983, starring Michael Landon and Karen Grassle as the Ingalls parents. Their kids were played by then-child stars Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson and twins Lindsay and Sydney Greenbush.
For Australia native Bracey, he admittedly had “no concept” of Little House before landing the role.
“I got an email about the audition and I saw the title and, maybe I’d heard the title before, but I had no concept of the story or the show or the books or anything like that,” the actor told hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos on their daytime TV show. “I read the script and it’s a really great script. It’s kind of hard to deny [that]. I thought, ‘Wow, it’s so rare these days to have a show of such high quality that’s nice.’ It’s about nice people trying their hardest in life and facing obstacles and getting up and overcoming them and trying to be good people while doing it.”
Bracey added, “I just thought that was such a special thing and quite rare these days in shows. A lot of shows are really dark and I love the idea of portraying a good man or a man trying to be a good man. [He’s] not perfect, far from perfect, but [Charles is] really wanting to be a good father and a good husband and a good member of his community.”
Little House on the Prairie is currently streaming on Netflix.
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