Alison Arngrim compares her on-screen alter ego to Hannibal Lecter: “If you do this correctly, there will be people who will hate you.”
She had golden ringlets that were the envy of every girl in town, a sneer that could strike fear in your heart and her merchant parents supplied her with endless amounts of candy.
We hated her. We loved her. We were endlessly fascinated by her.
She is Nellie Oleson, as played by Alison Arngrim in the Michael Landon-helmed “Little House on the Prairie.” And much to viewers’ delight (and understandable fear) she returned in a cameo in the Netflix reboot of the series.
But this time, the curls were nowhere in sight.
The 64-year-old Arngrim appeared in the second episode of the new series wearing a dirty dress and a man’s coat and scarf. She had some particularly authentic-looking prairie teeth too.
“Bwahaha!” Arngrim posted on Instagram three days ago. “I had SOOOOO much fun doing this! So happy people are enjoying my cameo on the new Little House!”
Simply listed as “Ida” in IMDB.com, Arngrim’s character is “a drifter who Mary and Laura encounter in the woods.” Though Ida tries to coerce the Ingalls girls to stay with her for some seemingly nefarious reasons, they escape in the nick of time.
In an interview with Tudum, Arngrim praised Alice Halsey and Skywalker Hughes, the actors who play Laura and Mary. “These little girls have résumés longer than some people who are 40 or 50 years old, and they’re 12,” she said.
Arngrim only had two weeks to prepare for the role of Ida. When she heard about her character’s role in the episode, she remembers thinking, “Oh, that’s creepy as all get‑out. That sounds right up my alley. I’ll be right over!”
In portraying Nellie in the original series, Arngrim said in the interview, “I was clearly the villain … and yet people talk about me as iconic and say they love Nellie. They can’t get enough.”
Even so, Arngrim isn’t precious about a new actor taking over the role.
“I’ve been waiting for the new Nellie for years,” she said. “Realize — and this is the tough part — if you do this correctly, there will be people who will hate you — and think the show is real. It’s like playing Hannibal Lecter. If you do it right, people will flip out.”