My condolences on the loss of your father. To many generations, legendary Hollywood manager and theater pioneer Thor Arngrim needed no introduction.
Thank you. He was Mr. Show-Must-Go-On. In fact, we’re planning a memorial for him in a theater in Vancouver. (Laughs.)

So fitting. And on a happier note, you’ll be ringing in your birthday in a Nellie Oleson wig.
I’ll be 47 when I start the show and 48 when I’m done.

Is toying with Nellie’s crazy-eyed look and bitchy spirit therapeutic?
God, yes. You have all of these child actors from long-running series denying their character or trying to get away from it. It’s much more therapeutic to dive in, embrace it and turn the whole thing on its end.

What’s the typical Little House-lovin’ audience reaction to your subversive humor?
I get away with quite a lot because—well, that Nellie, she’s a gossip. People do want that. People who grew up with the show, it’s strange how I’ve really invaded people’s subconscious. People tell me they’ve had nightmares about Nellie Oleson. It’s just odd. And I’m terrifying people in 143 countries now.

It’s a very strange phenomenon. We get a really young crowd. We have women my age who were kids when they watched the show and grew up with it. We have older women who were moms watching it. We’re on like our fourth generation of viewers. I get a lot of women in their late twenties/early thirties, a huge castle of gay men in just about any minute, and older people.

So the series appeals equally to liberals and conservatives?
It’s a real cross section of people, a real red state-blue state show. We have really conservative Christian people who like the moral values of the show. And then we have people who like to dress up in drag as the character and do vodka shots. And they’re all equally into it. It’s very bizarre.

It crosses all racial boundaries. It’s shown in every country. Most TV shows aren’t this popular with white and African-American audiences. Most shows like this aren’t popular in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Argentina and Borneo. I heard that we were Saddam Hussein’s favorite show. (Laughs.) So we’ve really crossed a lot of boundaries.

With my stand-up act, the younger crowd and the slightly wilder crowd are reverent but irreverent at the same time. It’s so weird. Because with The Brady Bunch, when people laugh and make fun of it—I know Susan Olson and the whole Brady Bunch thing—it’s very irreverent. “Like, oh my God, it was so stupid.” Then there are other shows that people worship and don’t want to make fun of. Little House … people can say, “Oh, I loved it. I cried at every episode”—and still laugh their ass off at the fact that Baby Carrie can’t talk. And still make fun of the fact that Michael Landon can’t keep his shirt on for five minutes and is wearing no underwear in his excruciatingly tight pants.

And though the show represents a simpler, safer time, pretty much every episode is about death, plague and destruction.
Right! Things you thought were there as a kid, you go back as an adult and go, “What?!? What was that episode about?!?”

I still have nightmares over Mary going blind.
It was a terrifying episode! And then her blind school burns down and her baby dies. It’s so sad. I mean, Jesus.

And didn’t Carrie fall down a well pre-Baby Jessica?
She did! Pre-Baby Jessica, Baby Carrie fell down like a mineshaft. And she also had an outhouse fall on her. And she was in a runaway hot air balloon. (Laughs.) You name it, Baby Carrie did it.

The Ingalls were always teetering on disaster. But at the end of the day, everybody joined in a group hug.
Yes, and lots of crying. This is why the French like it. It’s a very emotional show. The men all cry. It’s very popular.

Of course, Nellie Oleson was a nightmare unto herself. Were you conscious of your role as comic relief on the prairie?
Yes. People ask, “Did you know what the heck you were doing? Where’d that come from?” I think one of the reasons I got such flack from grown-ups and why people were so afraid of me is they didn’t want to believe I was acting, that I knew what I was doing. So they thought, “My God, that child must be a terror.” People thought I had to be like that in real life, because who could make that up?

The audition piece was that first episode “Country Girls” where I read my essay … that was all about how much things cost. One of the gags that got me the job was a gag that maybe not every 11-year-old girl got. She’s going on about the dishes: “We have three sets of dishes. One for everyday. One for Sunday. And one when somebody really important comes to visit, which we haven’t even used yet.” There’s the bitch bragging that they’ve got these dishes for celebrity guests. Eight years they don’t know anybody. They live in Walnut fucking Grove! Here’s these dishes they were never gonna use. And she’s too dumb to know she just said it. And I thought, this is brilliant. I was able to do that (gag) and I don’t think everyone got that joke.

You were comic relief—and yet you engendered a lot of hate.
(Laughs.) And people tell me I’m generally a nice person.

Were you picked on, feared or ostracized in school due to Nellie?
In school, luckily … they knew me. So they just went, “Oh, Alison’s doing something really weird again. She got this job. Meh.” But new people were difficult because they were afraid. Adults had a worse time with it than kids. They were like, “You’re 12. You can’t be acting.”

I did get beat up at a fair. The only time I went out in costume I got beat up. And I did get an orange soda thrown at my head during the Santa Claus Lane Hollywood Christmas Parade. People actually did throw things at me in public.

You’ve come full circle with that character. What inspired Confessions of a Prairie Bitch—the show and the book (out this June)?
People were constantly asking me these questions: “Was that your hair? Was that a wig? And are you really a bitch? How did you do it?” People are fascinated by the show and the character. “And why can’t Baby Carrie talk?” So I thought, What if we discussed all of these things and deconstructed the whole thing on stage? It’s absolutely all-true stories from my life. No matter how deranged these stories are that you’ll hear Monday and Tuesday (June 18-19 at Hollywood’s Magic Castle), every single one of them happened.

What types of juicy tidbits do you offer on stage?
I talk about the fact that I’ve never slept with anyone famous. Because I’ve only been hit on by horrible celebrities. I never got anyone good. Melissa Gilbert got Rob Lowe. The only people who wanted to have sex with me were people like Herve Villechaize and Dan Haggerty (aka) Grizzly Adams.

Please tell me that was a very special episode of The Love Boat.
Well, there you go. I did Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. Because when you’re on a series in the Seventies, it’s like some court-ordered program, it’s the law. I went with the whole drama because I was a runaway hooker being auctioned off on Fantasy Island and a bratty teen star on The Love Boat. This was all in the same week.

An auctioned-off hooker? Really, can you blame Tattoo?
Herve Villechaize married several beautiful models. He had a system. And it basically was if he asked every single human being he saw to fuck him, somebody had to say yes.

He was the original Mini-Me!
It’s true! Herve would get some. This made it kind of annoying if you were a girl on the set. There was this constant (in rapid-fire Tattoo voice), “You know what you need to do, you need to come to my dressing room now!” It was frightening. He just kept asking. If you were breathing, Herve goes, “OH! Doyouwannago?”

At this point it seems almost appropriate to ask if a mule was involved in the Grizzly Adams scene.
We were at Brenda Vaccaro’s Christmas party. Which is a terrifying thought in itself. It was that really horrible, Eighties thing of people trying to be hip and swingin’. He cornered me at the punch bowl and actually said something like, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.” He asked me to leave with him. What the fuuuuuck!

You declined, of course.
I did. I turned down Deney Terrio of Dance Fever as well. (Laughs.) There’s a cross-section, I’ll tell ya.

So basically anyone with too much chest hair or Tattoo.
Exactly. I have some standards.

You made tongues wag a couple of years ago when you said the real bitch on Little House on the Prairie was Melissa Sue Anderson. Who put a bee in her bonnet?
Well, I don’t know. She had it hard. I mean, okay, she went blind! Then her school burned down. And her baby died. It’s like, everything they can do to this poor girl. Then she was in a stagecoach crash when she was blind and pregnant—and had to climb up a hill! It may’ve been that. (Laughs.)

I had the opportunity to vent all of my hostilities. When I was in a bad mood, I had somewhere to go with it. But poor Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson had to be sweet and darling all the time. With Melissa Gilbert, at least Laura would disobey occasionally. She’d run away or she’d freak out and beat up Nellie Oleson. But Melissa Sue Anderson, here she is a teenage girl and she’s basically playing this Mother Teresa saintly part. That had to wear on her nerves at some point. And so she was not in a good temper.

It was bizarre, because I got away with so much. I probably could’ve been much worse as a child if I wanted to. If I was remotely nice people say, “Oh! She’s really so sweet.” In comparing me to Nellie. Here’s this girl who was compared to sainted Mary, like, “What?! What?! Leave me alone. Stop.”

You were liberated from your inner bitch.
If you don’t let it out, it’s going to come out somewhere. (Laughs.)

Any repercussions from Melissa Sue since you outted her bitch? You and other cast members assemble from time to time at reunion events.
She’s never come to a cast reunion. I kinda wish she would. It would fire things up a bit. She essentially married this wealthy producer guy and had some kids and moved to Canada. Melissa Gilbert was very clear in her book: “We’re not best friends.” So it’s not just me. And I’ve spread the word that we were teenagers for god sakes. If she wants to bury the hatchet and be friends, I will buy the pitcher of margaritas.

Did Melissa Sue resent Melissa Gilbert’s starring role in the show?
I think there had to have been a rivalry there. One of the things—and I do talk about this in my book—is there are huge pressures for child actors. It’s a wonder we’re not all bloody raving mad. The pressures are unbelievable. The stuff that stage mothers and agents and managers pull, your hair would stand on end. You’ve seen what’s gone on with Octomom and Jon and Kate and the balloon boy’s parents. Stage mothers, agents and managers carry on like this all the time. Some of the things they do are unspeakable.

When they got a bunch of girls about the same age for a series, this was like a pit bull fight. The stage mothers and managers-agents are like (in crazed voice), “You get in there honey and get your close up and don’t let that other little girl get in your shot.” It’s disgraceful.

The three of us really were being pitted against each other. The fact that the three of us got along as well as we did and we didn’t kill each other is a miracle (Laughs.) Melissa Gilbert and I came out of the whole thing best friends. It’s very unusual. We bonded in the midst of this madness. We became very, very close.

And pretty much the whole cast remains connected.
The cast of Little House, we became fairly good friends. A bunch of us get together for the reunions. Melissa (Gilbert)’s in a musical [Little House on the Prairie: The Musical] now, and a bunch of us are gonna go see her. I saw it in Minnesota but I hear they tweaked the show and it’s even better. Miss Beadle, Ma, Baby Carrie and a bunch of other people are going to see the show.

Even Ma?!
Yes! Ma Ingalls, Karen Grassle, lives up in northern California. She does theatre, like Driving Miss Daisy and shows like that.

And she does the walk-in bathtub commercials!
She does. I’m only 48 and I really want one. It’s kinda cool because you go, “Okay, I don’t have a mobility problem yet, but isn’t it kind of a pain in the ass to climb in and out of a bathtub? When you’re tired and just want a hot bath, wouldn’t you rather just open a big fiberglass door and walk in and sit down?

And Mrs. Oleson, the great Katherine MacGregor, is still going strong?
Yes. Yesterday, the 12th, was her eighty-fifth birthday. And what’s weird is I went to send her flowers, and apparently she’s in New York, like out hitting the clubs or something. She’s 85! Who knew she’d jump on a plane to New York?

You two were quite the pair. Mrs. Oleson was really evil incarnate. And Nellie the demon spawn.
It was great casting. She was really into that character. She said, “Well, when I did (the role), I was thinking, ‘This is a story told by Laura Ingalls and the show’s based on the book. This story’s being told from the point of view of a 9-year-old girl.” Those are real people that lived, and all of this really happened, although Laura took a little poetic license here or there. She said, “This is from a 9-year-old’s point of view.”

“So Pa is always perfect and handsome and wise, and Ma is just ever-loving and generous and beautiful and warm. And the sister is way too domineering and pushy.” She said, “How would a woman like that, a really tough, domineering woman who ran a store and dressed in black and was really outrageous and pushy and pushed her husband around—how terrifying would that be to a little girl?” Especially when she gave her mother a hard time about the eggs and such. She wouldn’t just be that obnoxious woman in the store—oh shit, here she comes. It would be the Wicked Witch of the West. And that’s how she played it—like the nightmare of a 9-year-old girl.

CLICK BELOW FOR PART TWO ON RETROALITY'S KITSCHIN' NEWS BLOG:
Prop 8, Alison as activist, Mackenzie Phillips & Diff'rent Strokes tragedy