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Home > Shows > Little
House Farewell > Press
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Little House
on the Prarie Farewell

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PREVIOUSLY
RELEASED
May 16,
2006

Contact:
Pam Slay,
818.755.2480

MELISSA ANDERSON SHAKES UP HER CAREER
IN EARTHQUAKE MINISERIES

Retired
‘Little House’ ex is back in the spotlight in NBC’s ‘10.5:
Apocalypse’

Melissa Anderson, the former
“Little House on the Prairie” costar, retired from show business
more than a decade ago to be a full-time, hands-on
mom.
Now, she muses, her kids are shoving her
out the door and back to work.
“It’s funny how
it has turned around on me like that,” says Anderson, who costars in
“10.5: Apocalypse,” NBC’s May disaster-movie miniseries.  “You
devote your life to raising your kids and then they start saying,
‘Oh, Mom, you should spend more of your time acting again’ and they
start pushing you to do it!”
Anderson, 43,
lives in Montreal with her writer/producer husband, Michael Sloan,
and their two kids, a 15-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old
son.
Playing the President’s wife in “10.5”
(which airs at 9 p.m. ET May 21 and 23) got her out of the house -–
but not too far from her family, given that the miniseries was
filmed in Montreal.
Doing the miniseries
brought back memories for Anderson, who was born and raised in
California, of past experiences in earthquake central.
“There was
a big one in 1970, when I was 8, and we weren’t far from the
epicenter,” she recalls.  “We had a two-story home and the
chandelier that hung in the stairwell was swinging all over the
place, but I didn’t even know to be scared. I thought it was
exciting.”
Years later, during the 1994
Northridge Earthquake, a 6.7 shaker, she wasn’t quite as
fearless.  “I was living in Malibu,” she says.  “We had
substantial damage from that.  I remember my daughter saying
something like, ‘My bed is moving, my bed is moving!’  That was
kind of scary.”
Anderson, billed as Melissa
Sue Anderson back in her “Little House” days, doesn’t necessarily
see this gig as a “comeback,” but she concedes that, yes, she’ll
probably be more active in films and TV in the coming
years.
“A lot of people can balance and juggle
and do it all, work and family, and not feel that they’re missing
something,” Anderson says, “but I don’t think I’m one of those
people.  I think I really needed to focus totally on raising my
kids in order to feel I was doing my best.”
To
many TV lovers, Anderson will always be Mary Ingalls, the oldest
“Little House” daughter, the one who eventually lost her
sight.  The 1974-83 family drama is still popular in reruns
(airing at 10 and 11 a.m. and 3 and 4 p.m. ET weekdays on Hallmark
Channel).  But she doesn’t think of her “Little House” legacy
as being any kind of a burden.
“I was happy
for the job and it was a great place to work and I feel like I did
some really good work and I learned a lot,” she says, “so it was all
good experiences.  But at the same time, I do hope it won’t be
all I’m ever associated with.”

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