- Wouldn't everyone love to play the popular role as the unpopular one?
- "No!" says Alison Arngrim
- She explains why being a monster is awesome
The role of "Nellie Oleson" in the cult series Little House on the Prairie made Alison Arngrim (60) world famous. Forty years later, the actress still likes to talk about her time on the series, as she did most recently on the podcast City Lights with Lois Reitzes.
Alison Arngrim on her villianous role
Among other things, Alison Arngrim tells in the podcast how well she got along with her Little House on the Prairie colleague Melissa Gilbert (53), who played "Laura Ingalls" and what it was like for her to play the unsympathetic one of the two.
Alison Arngrim didn't mind that her character wasn't popular back then. She tells: "Don't you often hear actors say, Don’t you always hear from actors, ‘Oh, I don’t want to play someone unlikable’? And I thought, ‘Well, you know, Anthony Hopkins didn’t get very concerned about that when he was Hannibal Lecter.''"
In fact, from her point of view, the greater challenge is portraying an unpopular character. "Any idiot can be liked. It takes talent to scare the crap out of people."
The actress also says that today she gets mostly positive reactions to her role: "Years later, people say, 'But I loved her, she was amazing.'"
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Despite all her euphoria, Alison Arngrim has to admit to Lois Reitzes that her role as "Nellie Oleson" in the cult show also had its downsides. You can find out how, in the worst case, people still react to them today in the video above.
