Melissa Gilbert having to kiss a 23-year-old actor when she was only 15-years-old on Little House On The Prairie has gone viral.
It was her first kiss.
The underage kiss is being discussed because her husband Timothy Busfield has been arrested on charges of two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse in New Mexico.
He turned himself in to the Albuquerque authorities on January 13, 2026, after an arrest warrant was issued.
The charges stem from allegations that he inappropriately touched twin boys, who were child actors on the set of the Fox series The Cleaning Lady, a show Busfield directed during its second season.
The legendary actress, now 61, who played Laura Ingalls on the 1974-1983 series, was filming a romantic scene with her TV husband Dean Butler, now 68, when her mother, Barbara Abeles, began sobbing near the set.
The emotional outburst led to such a disturbance that Michael Landon, the show’s leading actor and director, had to abruptly halt filming with a shout of ‘cut.’
‘It was totally unexpected. This kind of outburst just didn’t happen on our set,’ Butler wrote in his 2024 memoir Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond.
The tears erupted, in part, due to the mom not approving of his casting as Almanzo Wilder, as he was 23 at the time, while Gilbert had just turned 15.
Melissa Gilbert having to kiss a 23-year-old actor when she was only 15-years-old on Little House On The Prairie has gone viral. It was her first kiss; pictured 2023
The legendary actress, now 61, who played Laura Ingalls on the 1974-1983 series, was filming a romantic scene with her TV husband Dean Butler, now 67
The underage kiss is being discussed because her husband Timothy Busfield has been arrested on charges of two counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of child abuse in New Mexico. Seen in 2020
‘Her unhappiness culminated, perhaps, in not being able to bear seeing me kiss her daughter. It was a protective displeasure,’ he wrote.
‘Today that eight-year-difference between us is a tiny gap, but 45 years ago, it was the Grand Canyon.’
In the tome, he revealed that he and Gilbert remained close after the show and she had previously spoke about being uncomfortable over the kiss.
‘You were a man, a grown-up man with a car and an apartment,’ he recalled the star confiding in him. ‘I was a really young teenager… I was still wearing Mary Janes … I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs and I’d never even been on a date.’
She also told him that she ‘just wasn’t ready to have that kind of physical contact with anybody.’
Almanzo Wilder met Laura Ingalls in the season six episode ‘Back to School (Part 1)’ and they would share their first kiss on the episode ‘Sweet Sixteen.’
‘When I met Melissa in “Back to School,” there was no sign of a woman there,’ Butler explained to People in April. ‘She really was a little girl: bright, incredibly capable, spunky, vibrant, very extroverted,’ he said.
‘Now, I don’t know how much more of a woman there was there at the end, but she was being asked to go there at the end of that season. And I think she did it amazingly well when you look at how little life experience she had.’
Butler discussed the ‘anxiety’ they both felt before filming the kiss.
‘I think that there was anxiety on both sides of that kiss and how is this going to go? But we stepped up to it,’ he said.
Butler went on to state that the love angle was ‘heartfelt’ and ‘simple’ which is why it has resonated with many people.
‘I think that’s one of the reasons why people continue to love this, because it gives you this idyllic view of what a romance could be, what young love could be.’
Her mother cried so much over the kissing scene that Michael Landon, the show’s leading actor and director, had to abruptly halt filming with a shout of ‘cut’
‘It was totally unexpected. This kind of outburst just didn’t happen on our set,’ Butler wrote in his memoir Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond; seen in 2017
‘I’ve often said to Melissa, “I wish we could have been a little closer in age when we were doing this.” But that’s not the way it really happened,’ he told People; they are seen in a still
!['I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could have [had] ¿ a little more common ground, so we would've been able to play the loving side of this in perhaps a little bit more interesting way,' he added](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2026/01/16/18/83214549-13556883-_I_thought_wouldn_t_it_be_great_if_we_could_have_had_a_little_mo-a-108_1768587482385.jpg "Melissa Gilbert being forced to kiss an older actor when she was 15 on Little House On The Prairie goes viral after husband Timothy Busfield's arrest 25")
‘I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could have [had] … a little more common ground, so we would’ve been able to play the loving side of this in perhaps a little bit more interesting way,’ he added
‘When I met Melissa in “Back to School,” there was no sign of a woman there,’ Butler explained, adding, ‘I think she did it amazingly well when you look at how little life experience she had’; (Top L-R) Matthew Laborteaux, Gilbert, Michael Landon, Butler, Melissa Sue Anderson, Linwood Boomer, (Bottom L-R) Karen Grassle, Lindsay Greenbush
The duo starred on the show from from 1979 to 1983; (L-R) Gilbert, Landon, Grassle, Anderson, and Greenbush seen in a still
‘Because the audience loved her [Laura] so much … If she’d chosen this guy, then this guy must be really good. And so I got the benefit of a lot of all of that. The audience just came right with me, because she did.’
Butler told the U.S. Sun of the kiss: ‘If it had not been handled the way Michael (Landon) had envisioned it being handled, it could have been a very dicey situation with the age difference and the size difference.’
‘I don’t know that you could make that today. Melissa and I have talked about this a lot over the years. You couldn’t do that casting.’
‘There’d never been a casting like that before, and there’s never been a casting like ours since. And you absolutely could never do it today. That would be impossible. And it would be appropriate that you couldn’t do it today.’
