- - 'Little House on the Prairie' stars reunite for 'long, healing talks'

Brendan Morrow, USA TODAY December 29, 2025 at 1:39 AM

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It's a "Little House" family reunion!

Melissa Gilbert, 61, took to Instagram on Dec. 27 to share a "secret" she has been "keeping close to my heart for a while now": She has reconnected with her former "Little House on the Prairie" costar Melissa Sue Anderson, 63.

Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls on the classic TV series, shared a photo of herself with Anderson, who played her sister Mary, backstage at Gilbert's play "Pen Pals" in New York City. The photo also included Veanne Cox, Gilbert's costar in "Pen Pals," and Betty Buckley.

"Reconnection with a sister," she captioned the photo. "Long, healing talks. Lots of reminiscing. Lots of catching up. Lots of laughter and a few tears. I'm so happy to have Melissa Anderson back in my life. We share such an important history that no one else on earth truly understands. Just us Ingalls girls."

Melissa Gilbert attends the Monte-Carlo Television Festival on June 20, 2023.

Gilbert and Anderson have previously spoken about not being especially close with one another while starring on "Little House on the Prairie," which originally aired from 1974 to 1983.

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In her memoir "Prairie Tale," Gilbert wrote that although she and Anderson played sisters, "from the start, for whatever reason, we never had a real sisterly kinship."

"She was a strikingly pretty girl, and I wasn't, at least I didn't think so," she wrote. "As we got older, she was the girl everyone wanted to marry, and I was the plucky one they wanted to go fishing with."

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She continued in the book, "There was a distance to her, a coldness, though sometimes I wonder if it was just that I never knew how to get her to let me in. She wasn't easy to get along with. I think her reserve came across on-screen and was certainly apparent offscreen, whereas I wore my emotions as if they were a neon green T-shirt that glowed in the dark."

She also wrote in the book that there was a "competitiveness that existed off camera between Melissa Sue Anderson and me."

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For her part, Anderson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a 2010 interview that she didn't talk much about Gilbert in her own memoir, "The Way I See It," because "I honestly do not have a lot of memories of the two of us. We were very, very different."

In her Dec. 27 Instagram post about their reunion, though, Gilbert wrote, "The past is now just that and we can move forward as the sisters/friends we always wanted to be. What a wonderful Christmas gift."

The reunion comes a year after "Little House on the Prairie" celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2024. A new version is in the works at Netflix, and in May, Gilbert announced that young actress Alice Halsey will take over her role of Laura. Gilbert said she is wishing Netflix and Halsey "all the luck in the world!"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Little House' stars Melissa Gilbert, Melissa Sue Anderson reunite

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