EXTRA: Charlotte Stewart: The Walnut Groovy Interview

An extra-special treat for you all today. Enjoy. – WK

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WILL: Charlotte Stewart! Well, this is a fantastic pleasure, and if it’s okay, I’ll introduce us first. My name’s Will and I created Walnut Groovy as a kind of different type of Little House fan site. This is my wife Dagny. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Nice to meet you. 

WILL: We’re watching the whole series. We blog about it as a family, but it’s a little off-kilter. And our kids, three of them are adults and one is sixteen. So, when we talked to Melissa Gilbert a few months ago, she was relieved to know that she could swear during this interview. I’m not sure if you have fun doing that too, but I do want to let you know. 

We won’t ask you anything too racy. We know that you’re the “bad girl of Little House on the Prairie” in real life, but we’re not going to ask you anything too sensitive. Well, I did just want to acknowledge that we appreciate in your book, how you mentioned that sometimes you can see Miss Beadle’s nipples. Because we were pretty sure we weren’t imagining that.

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Well, I had nothing to do with that. It was the way they dressed me. You know, the blouse was silk, and you can see, you know, any . . . any SHAPE. So I was a little, you know, I was unaware of it until somebody mentioned it to me. 

WILL: And you didn’t have a whalebone corset or anything like that underneath. 

CHARLOTTE No, no, no, no, nothing like that. It was just me. 

DAGNY: I’m sorry, we usually wait till later in the interview to ask about people’s bodies and undergarments.

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: No, no, that’s a relief.

WILL: Well, it’s a huge delight to talk to you. You know, maybe before we start talking about you and your character, the legendary Miss Beadle, I have to ask about all those kids. You must have spent a whole lot of time with that same bunch of child actors. And I’m often surprised, in this day of, like, crazy fandom, that we don’t know who those kids were. They were on a popular show every week that’s still watched fifty years later, and we don’t know their names. Do you keep in touch with any of your old schoolkids? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: No. It took me a long time to get in touch with even the main kids in the series, because most of them, you know, Alison Arngrim and Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson, they were so much younger than me. I was thirty-three and they were nine, you know, so we didn’t socialize, even though their parents were on the set. They would come to work and go home. We just never had any extracurricular, you know, visits or anything, until twenty-five years later we started doing these shows across the country. And that’s when I got to know Alison and Dean Butler, and, you know, a couple of the other cast members, and now we’re together all the time. I live in Napa, California. They live in Los Angeles. Wendy [Turnbaugh], who played Baby Grace, lives in central California . . . and the only time we see each other now is in Illinois or Minnesota or Missouri! 

DAGNY: Well, and you’re probably going to have a big year next year. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Our fiftieth, yes. Yeah. In fact, this year we’ve got two big ones coming up. One of them is in Alabama. It’s going to be huge. I don’t know if you’ve heard of The Pioneer Woman? She has a television show of, you know, cooking and things. We met her recently in Alabama, went to visit her and she has agreed to do a show with us in September in Alabama. And so that’s good. That’s going to be a lot of fun. That will be fun. I like those very much. 

WILL: So maybe if we could ask you now about Miss Beadle the character. So Miss Beadle, of course, was a real person. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes, it was real. Miss Beadle was real. There’s different versions of her story. I’ve been to Missouri several times when they’ve done plays about the Ingalls family and how they traveled and where they went, where the kids went to school. In one of them, there was a MR. AND MRS. Beadle, that’s not mentioned in the books. In the books it’s only Miss Beadle that’s mentioned. 

[EDITOR’S NOTE: It is a little mysterious. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder identifies the local postmaster as a “Mr. Beadle” and says her teacher, identified only as “Teacher,” lived with him. In real life, Walnut Grove’s postmaster and cofounder was a Lafayette Bedal. He had a wife, Clementia, and a daughter, Eva – but since Eva Bedal was only four years old when the Ingallses came to Walnut Grove, it’s thought Clementia was most likely Laura’s real teacher and the inspiration for the TV Eva Beadle.] 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But beyond that I don’t know much about her, except she smelled nice. 

DAGNY: Yeah, right. Lemon verbena! 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. And you would not BELIEVE how many lemon verbenas I’ve gotten. 

WILL: I bet! 

DAGNY: We have lemon verbena soap that we just got, and we think of you every time we wash our hands. 

WILL: So when you were doing the show, did you know anything about the real Miss Bedal? Or did you construct a picture of her and her background in your mind? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, I was trying to be accurate to who she WOULD be. A woman who lived alone in a boarding house, who didn’t have – until she met Mr. Simms – she didn’t have, you know, much of a life. You know, other than school and church. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I’ll tell you how I portrayed her. My sister had seven children, from babies into the teens. So I had observed for many years how she related to these seven children of all ages, which is what Miss Beadle had in her classroom. She had, you know, five- and six-year-olds. She had teenagers. She had the farm boys. You know, there’s a couple episodes where the big boys come to school and they kind of intimidate Miss Beadle.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But you know, I just dealt with it, and I tried to do blackboards that had different lessons on them. Some for children – you know, two plus two is four – some for the older children, which would be history and geography. And when I came onto the set the first time it was ALL “two plus two is four.” So I asked specifically to the prop people if I could do my own blackboards. So all of the blackboards you see on the show are in my handwriting. I did them all, whether it was a geography lesson or history lesson or arithmetic. It’s all my handwriting, on all six blackboards.

WILL: Oh yeah? They’re quite elaborate. 

DAGNY: We sometimes do screen captures of them and try to answer your questions. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Well, I didn’t make up the questions. They were written up for me. Once they understood what I was doing, they started to write better questions for the age groups.

WILL: Did you ever put secret messages in, or try to get something past the censors?

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: No, I didn’t. It never even occurred to me. Now somebody could have done it behind me, I don’t know. . . . 

WILL: Those kids put the Bead through the wringer, though, didn’t they? You know, my favorite Miss Beadle moments, I think, are the ones where a little eye roll comes through. It’s always very subtle. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh yes, always. Willie and Nellie. Yeah, my eyes roll all the time. They were so inappropriate, and I tried to indicate that with, you know . . . “God, if they just . . . NELLIE!” People have asked me this before. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: You know, Alison Arngrim is one of my closest friends now. We travel together a lot. We became roommates on the road. So we’ve gotten to know each other quite well, but when we were doing the show, they were children, you know. We didn’t socialize at all. So, I finally got to know them. 

WILL: You had a lot of screen time with Willie Oleson specifically. And we’ve noticed that as the show progresses, you get a little more trigger-happy with sending him to the corner than you were at the beginning. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, I didn’t write the scripts. . . .

WILL: Of course.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But Willie’s character, you know, the only time you really see a relationship between Willie and Miss Beadle is when we have the storm. I send the kids home early from school, thinking I was getting them home before the storm. But the storm hits and they’re missing. And Miss Beadle is at her desk, you know, with her head down like this, and Willie comes over and puts his hand on her shoulder, very kindly, and says, “Are you all right, Miss Beadle?” And that’s the only time in the whole show we ever had that interaction.

WILL: It’s a very memorable moment, when he says, “It’s not your fault.” 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Right. 

WILL: And you just look give him this look of gratitude. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. 

WILL: It’s beautiful.

WILL: But the reason I bring up Willie is, I know that Jonathan Gilbert is not involved with Little House at all these days, but you know, one thing that we get questions about sometimes is, what was Jonathan Gilbert like to work with? You know, was he really like Willie Olson, or was he . . . ?

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, yeah, he was. He was. He was just a kid. You know, he paid attention, because that was his job, to pay attention. He knew his lines. He wasn’t a rascal that way. He was always on time.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Of course, that was Michael Landon’s rule. You show up on time and you know your lines. It’s the only rule he had, because other than that, they could do whatever they wanted, you know, all these kids became friends.

A lot of the children were children of our crew, and they could come every day and their parents were, you know, the mother or father, usually their father, was working all day on the show. They still had to have someone available to, I don’t know what you call it, you know, somebody to oversee them, besides the schoolteachers. We had two schoolteachers on set at all times, because the kids had to go to school. They had to do four hours of school every day. So that had to be overseen and timed, you know? 

DAGNY: In addition to their shooting? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, in addition to their time on camera. And some of them could only be on camera for a very short time, the little ones. I think it’s part of the law, the way children can work.

WILL: Well, people will take advantage of kids. I mean, we see now certain states trying to get thirteen-year-olds working in, like, chicken-processing factories and stuff.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes. But of course, back in the 1800s, you know, you have to consider families that were extremely poor and NEEDED to have their children work on the farm, you know? I mean, not Willie and Nellie, because their parents owned the store, they were rich, you know. 

DAGNY: Yeah. It’s funny that there’s this big class division in Walnut Grove. You know, when it really is just, like, there’s one merchant and then everybody else.

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Yeah, I know. And with the other Walnut Grove kids, you don’t know where those children live, who their parents are. You only see them in school. Well, in church too, I guess. 

WILL: Yeah, I’ve tried to map it out, actually, based on the groups of kids and parents that arrive together at church and school, to try to figure out who their families are. They’re random combinations for the most part, but I have made up some side stories for them. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: So, well, there were several parents who were regulars, you know, like one of our stand-ins who was there every day. You know, she would be a stand-in for me or for Karen [Grassle] – you know, while they were setting up the camera and then they would put her at the desk where I’d sit. 

WILL: And who was she? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh, man, you’re asking me, and I’m just blanking. I’m just trying to think of it. She passed away. . . . Ruth Foster. 

WILL: Yeah, Mrs. Foster! 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, Ruth Foster, that was it. Yeah. Ruthie. Yeah. She was my stand-in.

WILL: She’s great. I mean, like, the recurring Little House characters who speak are wonderful. But it’s just fun to see, like, what a great “community” the show created with the same faces who DON’T speak over and over again. Where you know, where some shows would just have different extras every time and think, “Ah, nobody will notice.” 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes, well, sometimes Michael’s own children would even be in my school room.

DAGNY: Oh, yeah? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. Michael’s kids would come in when they were, you know, little, like nine or ten years old. They’d sit kind of in the back. He had a daughter that used to come in periodically and be in my class. 

WILL: Yeah. And she became the teacher! Leslie Landon.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Right, Leslie. Leslie Landon wound up teaching my class later. Years later. 

WILL: Of course. But, you know, you mentioned the crew. You wrote in your book about how the crew were a bunch of, you know, macho, manly men. And yet Little House created this sort of different idea of masculinity than maybe was the norm at the time. Could you talk a little bit about that? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh, yes. Men on Little House could be SENSITIVE, you know. Men could cry. I mean, who cried more than Pa?

DAGNY: Nobody. He cried more than Carrie.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: A lot of the crew that worked on our show came from Bonanza, they had all worked with Michael on Bonanza. So you know, they were familiar with him, and it’s not that they were macho, macho men. They were just guys, fathers and sons and, you know, just regular guys, who had been in the industry probably for years and maybe their parents were in the industry, which is how they started doing props or moving the camera or all of that. They all came, most of them, from Bonanza, so yeah, you know, it was a kind of a different idea, a different idea of masculinity. . . .

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Wait, the gardeners are here and I have to close the doors otherwise it’s gonna make way too much noise.

WILL [to DAGNY]: I like her hats.

DAGNY: Mm-hm.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Sorry about that.

WILL: Quite all right. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh, I’m sorry, my stuff is out all over the house today. 

WILL: Oh, no, no.

DAGNY: Yeah, so is ours. 

WILL: Yeah, we’ve got some, like, Burmese puppets up there and –

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, I saw those.

WILL: Okay, so the show, you know, it was a little softer and more complex presentation of men. What about the women, though? How did you feel about the way the show looked at the woman’s role, or a woman’s role? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, you didn’t see a lot of them. I mean, you saw Ruthie Foster more than anybody, but we didn’t have a lot of women. And you don’t see the women having friends, just working or being a mother.

DAGNY: Yeah, well, we sometimes wonder about that. It does seem like Caroline and Miss Beadle are friendly with each other. 

WILL: She came to visit when you had your great terrible horse-and-buggy accident. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, and had tea. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: And when I was pregnant, they visited me. Yeah. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But there’s not a whole lot of female relationships. 

WILL: I mean, and of course, Caroline and Mrs. Olsen are frenemies. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I’m sorry, what was that? 

WILL: They’re . . . they’re frenemies, you know, “friend enemies.” Friends and enemies.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh, yeah! I think there’s only one show that really showed where Miss Beadle lived, and it’s when she gets fired and Charles comes to her boarding room to tell her. Other than that, you never see it. I have no idea where Miss Beadle lived. I have no idea. And it makes sense for a single woman, but where WAS the boarding house? I don’t know. In Walnut Grove? I never saw it.

WILL: And did she come from Minnesota? Did she come from another state? How did she wind up with this job? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I have no idea. They never did a story on it. 

WILL: Well, they should do a spin-off. It’s not too late. Beadle. A spin-off called Beadle! They should do that now.

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: No, that would be boring. That would be boring. No, she has to be a side character. 

WILL: But talking about some of the other cast members, I know that you and Karen Grassle used to car-pool to the set together, right? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Once, just once. 

WILL: Oh, okay, I had in my head it was all the time. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: No. One time I was having car trouble. And Karen lived fairly close to me, but she had a driver. Every day I had to drive myself. So I called and asked if I could ride with her. Our schedule usually wasn’t the same, because she’s at one set in the Little House and I’m in the stage with the school, totally different places. But when we coincided, I rode with her one time.

WILL: But you did – correct me if I’m wrong – you did go to a spa with Katherine MacGregor, is that right? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes! For a weekend. Yeah. We went away. It was fabulous. That’s how Katherine and I got to know each other because we went to a spa down by San Diego. I looked it up and wanted to do it, I think. I don’t know. I think. Or maybe she came up with the place? Anyway, we did it twice. We shared a room, and that’s when I found out that Katherine was a Hindu, because when we got to the room, she set up her little altar, and she did her meditation every day. So that was an interesting way for us to get to know each other, yeah. 

DAGNY: And what was she like? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Oh, she was hysterical! She had a great sense of humor. Outrageous, kind of, but one of the kindest and most open people I’ve ever known. She had a little house across the street, up in the hills in Hollywood, across from the meditation center. And she would invite people to her house that were meditators and they became friends. And also fans would find out where she lived. . . . She would let them, you know, come in and visit in her house! Oh, she was not anything like, you know, Mrs. Oleson. She was just outrageous and giving and had a big laugh and was, you know, very generous. Other than Katherine, I really didn’t know anybody else. 

WILL: I always thought you had really good chemistry with Karl Swenson, Mr. Hanson. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, yeah, I mean, because I knew who Karl was. We had not worked together, but I knew him from “Old Hollywood.” You know, we had both done Bonanzas and Gunsmokes and Medical Center and all those other television shows.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: So I knew him from before, but I didn’t really, we didn’t socialize. You know, I never saw him off the set. I never saw anybody, you know, off the set! I was a hippie. You know, you read that in my book. I always say “hippie.” I was with the rock-and-rollers, you know, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. That was my life.

WILL: One thing that was fun for us to learn is that your hair was really short under that Miss Beadle wig, wasn’t it? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. About like it is now. I had just cut my hair before I got the part, and before that when I did Bonanza if you ever saw that, I had really long hair. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But I had just cut it. So they had to get me a wig, you know, and to do a lot of that stuff. And I had to get a permanent. You know what a permanent is? [to WILL]: You wouldn’t know. [to DAGNY:] YOU would know. 

WILL: No, I remember my auntie giving herself a home perm.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I had to get a permanent because I have this very straight hair. And they wanted it very curly in the front and the wig wouldn’t stay pinned to my fine hair.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: You know, we’re shooting outside and the sun and the wind, and I had to get a permanent, which was horrible. Look.

[She holds up a tote bag with a picture of Miss Beadle and Laura on it. They’re reading Dicky Bird Land.]

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Can you see?

WILL: Yeah! I love that scene. That’s the first one where you’re teaching her to read, right? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, that’s correct. This is one of the bags I make. I just made this one today. 

DAGNY: Wow. Before ten o’clock!

CHARLOTTE STEWART: And then look, this one – Victor French. 

WILL: Ah, well. And . . . and you were, um . . . FRIENDLY with him also, right? 

[CHARLOTTE STEWART gives a meaningful look, and WILL and DAGNY burst out laughing.]

WILL: Well, he sounds like he was . . . sounds like he was a likable person also. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Yes, he was VERY LIKABLE. Yeah. I’ll limit it to that.

[laughter]

CHARLOTTE STEWART: He was going through a very hard time. He was getting divorced –

WILL: Oh yeah, he was married to Julie Cobb, right?

CHARLOTTE STEWART: – and it was miserable. He was just miserable. So, it was a very good friendship. You know, I still cherish his friendship. But we did become VERY CLOSE. [laughs]

WILL [laughing]: Well, we can leave it at that. But thank you for talking about him. 

WILL: So you mentioned, you know, the episode where the older boys come in and give Miss Beadle a hard time, and they wind up replacing her with this awful dreadful tyrannical guy.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes.

WILL: In your book, you talked about the scene where Charles comes to tell Miss Beadle that she’s being laid off. And, you know, I wonder if you remember what you said about that, and the crying? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, yeah, I do. That episode was DIRECTED by Victor French, who directed quite a few of our episodes.

DAGNY: Yeah, we always cheer when his name comes up.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But in that particular one, well, he pulled me aside before Charles came to the door. I think we had done a walkthrough briefly, you know, with dialogue, and Victor pulled me aside and he said, “Now, don’t let Charles see you cry.” 

So I knew I had to do it that way. Miss Beadle had to be strong and hold it in and accept the consequences of whatever the town had decided, even though she didn’t think it was fair. And that was Victor. That made it work.

WILL:  Yeah. Well, and it works beautifully. And it’s funny, because when I read that I had already seen the episode many times before. And then I read what you said about it. And the thing is, what I like about how you do that scene is that you can tell she HAS been crying, but she’s not doing it WHILE HE’S THERE.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: No, it was very hard for her. Here’s a single woman. This is her job. You know, this is her life. In fact, it never shows where she eats, or is there even a cafe where she can even go have dinner, you know? So we don’t know what’s going on with her, but it’s hard, and then she has to LEAVE, you know? So yeah, that was hard. She didn’t want to leave. 

But in fact, Richard Basehart played the new teacher, and as you know, he was really good at being a mean teacher. But I chose not to MEET him the day he came to the set, because I wanted to keep that distance, and Miss Beadle wouldn’t have met him anyway. So that day I saw him across the set, but I just chose not to meet him. I didn’t know if that would affect him, to meet the character he was replacing or whatever. So I just, I just left. So I don’t know, maybe it was a mistake. 

WILL: Well, that episode is very memorable. You know, when he goes berserk, like, [as RICHARD BASEHART, screaming] “I must have ORDER! I must have ROUTINE!” 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Right. It’s quite a performance.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: So, well, when they hired me to play Miss Beadle, they said, “It’s a four-year contract. We know it will be over in four years because Almanzo Wilder and his sister Miss Wilder will come to Walnut Grove and she becomes the teacher.”

So in the storyline, even though there’s nothing written about Miss Beadle, you know, living in Walnut Grove and all of that, or why she left, or that she marries Mr. Simms. But they wrote it into the story that they marry, and I get pregnant. And in those days, a teacher couldn’t be pregnant, even married schoolteachers could not be pregnant. It was, “THEY HAVE SEX?” 

WILL: Yeah, right. It does boggle the mind, doesn’t it? It’s baffling, and I think we’re seeing, you know, not to take this in a different direction, but people like that are in our country right now. It’s like there’s this great movement to pretend that people don’t have sex, don’t have it with the people they have it with, don’t enjoy it, don’t live the way that we all really do. It drives me crazy. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes. Like, you know, Pa and Ma, they’re ALWAYS in bed together. 

WILL: Yeah. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: You ALWAYS saw that. 

WILL: Yeah. And there’s always, like, a suggestive giggle when they transition out of those scenes, right? And always eating popcorn in bed. We always say that when they have popcorn, then for sure they’re doing it that night. 

WILL: But anyways, you’ve said you’ve never watched the Little House finale, right? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. 

WILL: I know you weren’t in it, but . . .

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I knew it was coming up and I heard that they were going to blow up the town. I mean, I would probably watch it now, if it, you know, if it comes up and I see it’s going to be on TV. But at the time, I had been off the show for five years. I wasn’t that nostalgic, but I did have a love for Walnut Grove, the town, and I just didn’t want to see it blown up.

WILL: It’s a nutty ending, for sure. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah. I will watch it if it comes on, because I’ve never seen it. In fact, I didn’t watch the last couple of years of the show. I kind of lost interest after Laura grew up. 

WILL: And well, you know, all of that final season . . . 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: It was enough. Yeah, it was enough. It probably should have ended at about Season Seven or something. 

WILL: Do you know, we’ve heard rumors that they’re rebuilding the original set for the anniversary. Do you know anything about that? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yes I do! No. For next year, for the fiftieth anniversary, they are not rebuilding the set. They’re putting up props of the set you can have your picture taken in front of. 

WILL: I see.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: It’s not the set. It won’t be the real set. It will be a mock-up of it. They’ll do this. They’re going to do the school and they’re going to do the Little House and maybe the Oleson store. But those will be props that when you come to the anniversary in Simi Valley, you can have your picture taken in front of that. 

WILL: It’s gonna be big. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: It sure is. Come! You’re gonna come, aren’t you? 

WILL: Well, we, yeah, I mean, we’re trying to be strategic and know which one we should go to because there’s gonna be a lot of different events. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, there is. It’s not all out on the property, some of it will be, but you have to be transported by van or car to get there. You can’t just park your car and go. There’s going to be a parking lot and shuttles that will take people up to the site and the rest of it will take place in Simi Valley, the town of Simi Valley, where they’ll have you know restaurants and I forget all the stuff. I’m not really involved in it. But it’s not all going to be in Simi Valley. So there’ll be lots to do. That’s what I hear. Lots to do. It’s going to be a big year. It’s fun and we’re going to be on the road a lot that year, Walnut Grove and Missouri and Illinois and Oklahoma. We’re going to be doing a lot of shows next year with the full cast. 

WILL: You know, it’s just fun that Little House, the phenomenon, is still alive. We get people writing in to our blog quite frequently and saying, “I’m in my twenties,” or you know, like, younger than you’d expect for Little House fans. And that’s great to see. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I know. I’m meeting them all over the country. You know, when we did the show, we were laughed at in Hollywood. People said, [scoffingly] Little House on the Prairie! Well, where are THEY today? 

WILL [laughing]: Yeah, right. No kidding. You know, somebody said once that, you know, you don’t see, like, a Fantasy Island marathon on TV ever. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: Right!

WILL: I mean, there were a lot of shows that were hits that are just, like, lost to the dustbin of history. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Also a lot of our cast is still alive, at least the ones who were children on the set. I was kind of in between the older and younger generations. You know, I was in my thirties when I did Little House, so you know, I say to myself, I’m FIFTY YEARS OLDER now, and people still like this? 

[laughter]

DAGNY: We’re both in our late forties, so we watched when we were kids, but we didn’t watch from the very beginning, because we were little. But even after it went off the air, it just lived in syndication there. You couldn’t turn the TV on without finding Little House on someplace. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: It’s still on every day. Every single day now somewhere, all over the world. I was in France with Alison. She and I and some of the cast members went to France a couple of years ago, and we’d meet people on the street who would do a little bit of talking in French about [FRENCH ACCENT] “Miz Beadle.”

[laughter]

But I know the big secret about Little House on the Prairie is people like you. People who watch it as a family. People did it then and still do it now. Name another show that Grandma, Mom and kids watch together.

WILL: Yeah, not many, and certainly not today. I mean, although, we have a different type of family, so we’re always watching sort of questionable entertainments with our kids. . . . 

DAGNY: Yes, and our youngest family member, who isn’t able to join us today, he was like, oh gosh, if you could ask her about working with David Lynch, that’d be great. 

WILL: Yes, our son Roman is a big David Lynch fan. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: That’s great. You know, when I met David, I was living out in Topanga Canyon, which if you don’t know what it is, it’s a mountain area outside of Malibu, up in the hills. And it’s kind of the hippie, hippie colony, kind of. And I was living there. 

And I got a call. My roommate was working at the American Film Institute and she came home from work one day and she said, “One of the students is going to make a film and he needs an actress. And I told him my roommate was an actress, so I invited him to dinner.” So David Lynch came to dinner with his wife at the time, and we had dinner and he gave me the script, and I didn’t understand anything about it, but I said, of course I will do this.

I thought it was like a week. I didn’t know it was going to be like fourteen months, you know, on and off working on this thing. But yeah, I did it. I used to do a lot of student films, because if you’re a student filmmaker, how are you going to learn to work as a professional if you don’t have professional actors? So I used to do all these student films, none of which ever appeared again, except for David Lynch’s. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: So I did Eraserhead, and oh my God, it won the LA Film Award as soon as it was released. I was as shocked as anybody, because it was a really odd piece. You know? The main character was strange. My character, Mary X, she was strange.

But we didn’t play it “strange.” We played it REAL, as if we believed what was happening. We didn’t. That was one of David Lynch’s really good characteristics. As a director, he directed that he wanted it REAL. So, I was a worried mother because my baby wasn’t right. Right. What was wrong with this baby? 

WILL: Yeah. The piece was surreal, but YOU were real in it. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, WE were real. We really believed our situation. You know, and the character of Henry, he was real. He was completely dumbfounded by life, you know? Yeah. 

WILL: It’s a sad movie. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, it is sad. 

WILL: So do you keep in touch with the baby? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: I have been given so many babies. Honestly. 

WILL [laughing]: I bet! 

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: People make them and bring them to me. 

WILL [laughing]: I bet. You probably have a whole basement full of grotesques. 

DAGNY [laughing]: You should make them into canvas bags!

CHARLOTTE STEWART [laughing]: I don’t keep them. I say “Thank you,” I let them take a picture of me with the baby, and I hand it back.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: But I won’t talk with them about it because David has asked me not to talk about the baby. 

WILL: Oh yeah, that’s a big secret, right?

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Yeah, David Lynch asked me. 

WILL: Don’t worry. We won’t ask you to tell, we won’t ask you to tell.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: In fact, I just did a film festival in Dallas about a month ago, and they ran Eraserhead. And they flew me to be, you know, interviewed with an audience. And I called David before I left and I said, “I would like to show a picture of Mary with the baby. Is that okay?” Because he never liked that. 

He said, “Well, Charlotte, you know, I don’t like the baby to be seen.” He was very strict. 

And I said, “Okay, I understand.” 

And he said, “But you can show it. But you can’t talk about it.” 

I said okay. And then I thought about it, and I called him back and I said, “You know what? I’m not going to show the baby.” Because people that are going to see the movie for the first time, I don’t want that. It would spoil a big part of the movie, when you see that baby for the first time. 

WILL: Oh, most definitely. Oh my God, yeah. Dagny’s never seen it. We’ll be watching it. We’ll make her watch it!

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Okay, but the only thing I ask you is to just sit back and not try to figure everything out. Just sit back and let it wash over you. Let Henry’s loneliness just wash over you. What a poor lonely man. Poor lonely man that he accepts this weird girl, to marry her. And then have this baby that he ends up having to take care of. Just go with it. 

WILL: That’s good advice. I like it. Well, we’re coming up on an hour now – 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: We are?

WILL: Yes! So, this has been a pleasure, and you are just absolutely lovely, and do you have a link where people can order your bags? 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: People can reach me, you know, on Facebook. I’m on Facebook, and just write to me and I will send pictures to whoever wants it. I don’t have a website. I don’t have time to do a website. 

WILL: It’s a whole second job, yeah.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Well, I travel a lot, and I sell them on my road trip. Next year is going to be huge, and this summer is going to be huge. So I got to get busy. You know, I don’t have any other job right now. I’m not acting anymore. I called my agent and said you know what, I can’t, I just can’t. I love living in Napa. I don’t want to go back and forth to L.A. and do auditions. Well, it’s just, I’m eighty-two, you know, I need my time! 

WILL: Well, and with your bags, you’re still working, which is great, and you’re obviously sharp as a tack, and maybe we’ll have a chance to meet you in person, you know, at a reunion next year.

CHARLOTTE STEWART: I will be there next year. I’ll be there for the event. So I look forward to meeting you too. 

WILL: Thank you so much. 

CHARLOTTE STEWART: Hey, darling, it was great. Thank you. Bye bye.