'Little House on the Prairie' Actor Defends Kiss With Teen Melissa Gilbert Despite Their Age Gap: 'The Moms Were Worried'

Dean Butler battled anxiety after discovering he was going to give his co-star, Melissa Gilbert, 15, her first kiss on screen and in real life.

The actor, who played Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie,” has written a new memoir, “Prairie Man” which details her rise to fame and the age gap scene that still raises eyebrows today.

“You just couldn’t do it today,” the 68-year-old told Fox News Digital. “There would be way too much blowback. It’s remarkable that we didn’t have more blowback than we did… But I think it was handled so tastefully that people… forgot about the age difference.”

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Dean Butler was 23 when he was cast as Melissa Gilbert's love interest. She was 15. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“I think the audience had been watching Melissa for years and loved her so much,” Butler said. “They wanted to see when she declared her love for this young man in such an honest and innocent way. She fell in love the first time she saw him. The audience was ready to accept that.”

Butler was 23 when he was cast in the popular television series, which aired from 1974 to 1983. Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls, was “a 15-year-old girl.”

Dean Butler gave Melissa Gilbert her first real on-screen kiss. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“She was such a little girl,” Butler recalled. “She was very sophisticated in the industry. As an actress, she was very talented. But as a young woman, she was very inexperienced. And I think it was much more difficult for her than it was for me. . [And] I don't know of any casting that's like that…our casting had an age gap of 15 to 23 years.

Dean Butler wrote a memoir called “Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond.” (Citadel)

According to Butler, the characters in the original series were supposed to have a 10-year age difference. He noted that Gilbert had “complete trust” in his TV father, who carefully supervised the scene.

“Melissa had a very strong relationship in her life, the one she had with Michael Landon,” Butler said. “When Michael said to her, ‘This is the man for you,’ she was ready to put aside all of her anxieties and go for it. And Michael never fooled anyone on the show. He really had it all figured out. He knew what he was doing. He believed very strongly in his creative instincts. He believed that it would work.”

“I'm really grateful that I was the guy he felt he could trust with that,” Butler added.

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Dean Butler (center) told Fox News Digital that Michael Landon (left) was carefully supervising the filming. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Yet Butler and Gilbert had to overcome their fears in an attempt to bring the scene to life.

“I think a lot of young actresses may have buckled under the pressure,” Butler said. “Melissa had no experience. She had never been on a date. She had never kissed anyone. She had never done anything like that. This was all still in front of her. So ask her to intervene even though she had no real life experience? Thanks to Melissa's courage, she did it. She put all her anxieties aside and stepped up. to be the Laura she was meant to be.

Dean Butler said he was determined to be a gentleman and make Melissa Gilbert feel comfortable. (NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images)

“My job was to make his job as easy as possible for him by being the gentleman I was led to be,” Butler continued. “There hasn’t been a casting like the one they did with us since then. This casting simply couldn't happen today. Certainly not on a mainstream television show. »

Melissa Gilbert and Dean Butler experienced anxiety on set before their kiss. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

The couple smooched in the episode titled “Sweet Sixteen.” Butler wrote that nearly 100 people surrounded them on set, but one person who broke down in tears was Gilbert's mother, Barbara Abeles.

“I felt like Barbara wasn't fully supportive of my presence on the show,” Butler wrote. “His unhappiness perhaps culminated in the fact that he couldn't bear to see me kiss his daughter. It was a protective discontent; Barbara knew his daughter. I didn't, and in a sense , I am happy.”

Although the scene was “beautifully staged,” Abeles was not alone in his reservations about the script. Butler explained that shortly after he was cast, an August 1979 article in the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain made a “disturbing prediction.”

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Several “concerned” mothers wrote to express their outrage at the age difference in the casting. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“Dean Butler has perhaps the trickiest role of the 1979-1980 television season. He must convince viewers of the hit series Little House on the Prairie that it is normal for an adult man to fall in love with a pubescent girl. »

Butler attempted to clarify matters, telling a reporter, “I think this is going to be handled very cautiously.” » He was nevertheless aware that the network was “venturing into risky territory”.

Viewers noticed. Butler described how, after the episode aired, an upset mother wrote to a Midwestern newspaper, calling for casting director Susan Sukman to be “burned alive” for associating Gilbert with “a grown man.” The horrified matriarch asked how she could still convince her daughter to wait for the right moment when such “romantic depravity” was taking place in “Little House.”

Dean Butler wrote in his memoir that Melissa Gilbert's mother made her feelings about the couple known on set. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“There have been letters…and comments about this age difference,” Butler told Fox News Digital. “The mothers were concerned…Seeing a visibly young Melissa Gilbert with someone much older than her in this romantic relationship was a challenge for some people. But I think…people understood the spirit of the program. They understood where it was going. And people who were familiar with the subject, who read the books, knew that there was a 10-year difference between Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder when they got married.

In her memoir, Gilbert wrote that after meeting Butler, she faced “a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger, and even nausea.” She later told Butler in a phone call: “How was I going to do that? You were a man, an adult with a car and an apartment. I was a very young teenager. I didn't have allowed to wear heels. I always wore Mary Janes. I couldn't pierce my ears, I wasn't allowed to shave my legs, and I never even went on a date.

Dean Butler's character proposes to Laura Ingalls (Gilbert). However, she declines, noting that her father wants her to wait until she's 18. (NBC Television/Courtesy Getty Images)

“The biggest problem I had during this whole time was the issue of physical space,” Gilbert said, as quoted by Butler in her book. “I just wasn’t ready to have that kind of physical contact with anybody. When it came to sex and physical relationships, I was basically raised by a puritan. . . . She was an absolute puritan when it came to sex and intimacy. I would try to have these conversations with her, and it would inevitably come down to: Good girls don’t do it.”

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Despite the discomfort the kiss brought to the couple, Butler stressed that there were no hard feelings today.

Melissa Gilbert wrote the foreword to Dean Butler's book. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“I think we are now colleagues who are very respectful of each other,” he explained. “We know we're part of something. We're bonded by this experience, having done this. . . . She knows I respect this special moment in her life and her career. . . . We will always be bonded by this experience.”

Almanzo Wilder (Dean Butler) and Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) married and had children. (NBCU/NBCUniversal Photo Bank via Getty Images)

“Melissa is a very accomplished woman,” Butler said. “I always had great respect for her and what she accomplished… She deserves that respect from all of us who were part of Little House. The relationship I have with Melissa today Today is important in my life because of the work we have done and how much it means to so many people. She is good, I am good, I was good.

Today, Butler is receiving a whole different kind of feedback from his fans who now admit that he was their first crush.

Dean Butler today. (Bobby Bank/Getty Images)

“It’s incredibly flattering,” he said. “It's also humbling. I take it very seriously, being the guy they fell in love with…I'm still that person. I'll always be that person. And I'm happy about that.”