NELLIE OLESON & ME

As a kid I was a gynormous Little House on the Prairie fan, so needless to say I got pretty excited when my editor asked me to interview Alison Arngrim (a.k.a. Nellie Oleson) to publicize her upcoming Portland appearance. Alison is really sweet, smart and quick, and my alloted time (25 minutes) flew by. After our phone call we exchanged some short email messages, so after all that contact I feel like an honorary citizen of Walnut Grove.

Here's the lil' story I wrote up:

No list of great fictional villains would be complete without the name Nellie Oleson.
As the calculating, curly-headed foil to plucky Laura Ingalls, she considerably offset the saccharine factor on the TV classic Little House on the Prairie . Who could forget the time Nellie sneered the words “country girls” at Laura and her sister, or the episode when Nellie feigned paralysis to shame Laura into being her servant?
Alison Arngrim, who is now 45, reflects fondly on the nasty deeds she committed in the role of Nellie. “I was fascinated by villains as a kid,” she says, citing Vincent Price’s characters as an inspiration. “I tried out for the part of Laura,” she says, “but when they offered me Nellie I took the part and ran with it.”
After a 17 year absence from the screen, Arngrim recently appeared in several indie films, and she has rekindled a passion for stand-up comedy that dates back to her teen years. Known for her close ties to the gay community, she brings her one-woman show Confessions of a Prairie Bitch to CC Slaughters on May 4. The multi-media, autobiographical show combines storytelling, photographs and video footage from Little House and Arngrim’s 1981 guest spot on Fantasy Island.
“The show really frees me up,” Arngrim says. “It’s all about what it’s like to be an ex-child star in a weird cultural niche.” Confessions will also play in Seattle, and in June it goes international with a two night gig in gay Paris.
Twenty-five years after Little House ended its NBC run and went into massive syndication, Nellie remains an international icon. Arngrim has fans all the way from France to Borneo, and tells of a school in Ireland where the students refer to the playground bully as “The Nellie.”
Arngrim lives with her husband in the Los Angeles area, dividing her time between political causes and performing. She’s a longtime AIDS activist, and last year she earned a leadership award for her work with the National Association to Protect Children. Arngrim outed herself as an incest survivor on Larry King Live in 2005.
Activism, she insists, has done wonders for her mental health. “I went to therapy for 20 years and now my therapist tells me not to come back!”