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By India McCarty
LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE actor Linwood Boomer learned a lot from co-star Michael Landon, including how to run his own show.
“Not so much [about] creating, but the way the show ran,” Boomer, who would go on create and showrun hit sitcom MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, said during an episode of “The Joe Vulpis Podcast.”
The main lesson he learned from Landon? “Little kids should not be full-time employees.”
“You know, they should not have adult kind of jobs and adult kind of responsibilities,” he explained. “And I think it can be very harmful to a kid to be in that situation where they’re supporting the family and they’re sort of the authority figure or power figure in a family and they’re like nine, you know, they’re not equipped to handle it.”
‘Little House on the Prairie’ Star Reveals the One Michael Landon Rule That Helped Shape His Own TV Hit 20 Years Later https://t.co/CovI3C6iZM
— Parade Mag (@ParadeMagazine) June 16, 2026
Related: LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE Star Recalls Losing ‘Father Figure’ Michael Landon
While working on MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, for example, Boomer said they didn’t chastise the young actors if they were “five minutes late because they were busy playing.”
“We’re not going to give them lectures about what they need to do. We’re not going to tell the teachers that they have to delay school a little bit and keep it quiet because, you know, we need to get this shot in,” he said.
Boomer explained that that was something he observed in Landon because “the hours were set up so that the kids could be kids.”
Other LITTLE HOUSE stars have spoken highly of Landon who, in addition to playing Charles Ingalls on the show, was a producer on the show and directed many episodes.
“I think people respected Michael, but I don’t think that he had that industry respect that he deserved,” Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, said during an episode of the “Little House 50” podcast. “He captured audiences in this profound way and continues to capture audiences. In a changing world, he still is able to capture people because there’s truth in what he’s writing about.”
In a 2024 interview with PEOPLE, Melissa Gilbert (Laura Ingalls Wilder), said, “Michael was the quarterback, right? So he set the tone of what we were doing.”
“Every year for NBC, he would announce the Rose Parade and instead of taking a payment for that, he would use that money to buy the cast and crew [of LITTLE HOUSE] Christmas presents every year,” she recalled. “So he sacrificed his New Year’s Eves, basically, to be at the Rose Parade at 3 a.m. so that he could give us all really amazing Christmas presents.”
Landon’s kindness to his co-stars, particularly the young ones, is what the cast of LITTLE HOUSE remember most about the actor.
Read Next: LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE’s Shannen Doherty Says Co-Star Michael Landon Mentored Her
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