Alison Arngrim, who portrayed Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie, recently spoke up about what being on the set of the show was really like. Her perspective is particularly interesting because she was a child star on set with many “older” adults. Now, at age 64, she laughs about how the adults on set were smoking cigarettes and drinking beer all the time, but she remembers questioning how they were able to show up for work each day and function, considering their alcohol consumption habits.
During an appearance on the “Here’s What Happened” podcast, Alison spoke about how her “older” costars drank copious amounts of alcohol and had “insane” parties. Looking back on it now, she imagines they perceived it as totally normal.
She said they drank a lot during the day, but then drank even more once they were done working.
Alison also clarified that the child actors were not engaging in this behavior. “The children were not smoking, thank heavens,” she said on the podcast. The adults, however, “were puffing Marlboros all over the place” and managed to consume “a couple cases” of beer on a daily basis without appearing drunk on set.
“No one was drunk on the set,” Alison said. “They were burning it off or something, because these guys were going on ladders and hanging lights and I’m going, ‘I know they’re living on beer.'”
According to Alison, her adult co-stars would set up a bar when they were done for the day, and that’s when they would “start really drinking.”
They also had wild parties.
She recalled witnessing even more heavy drinking during Christmas and wrap parties. “Everybody had a designated driver because that was insane,” she said. The partying was so excessive that she questioned how her co-stars were able to function at work.
“I remember just thinking, ‘How are these people still like awake to do this?'” she said. While she seemed to find it surprising, she doesn’t think her co-stars thought anything of it. To them, it was normal. “I mean, their tolerance was God knows what because they were out of the 50s,” she explained, adding, “They did not think this was weird.”
Alison noted that in addition to the heavy drinking and smoking on set, no one seemed to prioritize healthy food, either. “They came from an era everybody smoked and everybody drank, like all the time,” she recalled. “And there was no health food and there was no vegetarian option and there was no gluten-free muffins.”
Instead, she remembers morning snack options that consisted of coffee, water, sugar, milk, and donuts.
Alison also previously shed light on how being a child star affected her.
In addition to the fact that she was surrounded by adults drinking, smoking, and partying all the time, Alison also had to navigate all of the negative attention that can come along with stardom when she was just a child. In 2024, during an interview with People, she spoke about how challenging that was for her.
“When you look at what an adult goes through — going into show business, sudden loss of privacy, becoming very famous, stalkers, craziness — think about that happening when you’re nine,” she told the publication. “You’re still learning. Imagine you haven’t gotten to long division yet. You’re learning basic math and learning to read, and you now need to deal with what the National Enquirer thinks about you.”
