Don’t mess with Half Pint!
Melissa Gilbert, the actress who portrayed the beloved character of Laura “Half Pint” Ingalls on TV’s Little House on the Prairie, defended Jason Bateman, who played her on-screen brother, after he said he’d been hazed behind the scenes.
“Who? Who did this to you?!?!” Gilbert wrote next to an image of PEOPLE’s story about Bateman’s claims. “I will kick their tush….no one smacks down my little bro! #iwillcutabitch.”
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Bateman was 11 when he played an orphan adopted by the Ingalls family, which included Laura, as well as Pa (Michael Landon), Ma (Karen Grassle), Mary (Melissa Sue Anderson), and others. He appeared on 21 episodes of the NBC family drama in 1981 and 1982.
He explained on a recent episode of Hot Ones how the older kids on set treated him as a newbie. It was not by telling him his character would die, which host Sean Evans had asked him about.
“Untrue,” Bateman answered. “What they did do was, they pinned me down on the ground, straddled me with knees on my shoulders, and gave me noogies or whatever they call it on my chest.”
He added, “They knocked on my chest like I was a front door.”
He quickly plotted his revenge.
“I went to the makeup artist and said, ‘Put a big black-and-blue mark all over my chest.’ And then I went to their parents,” Bateman recounted, “and I said, ‘Look what your kids did to me.’ And that was good. I got them in trouble.”
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Bateman joined the show in its later years. Premiering in 1974, Little House featured a large ensemble cast that featured multiple kids in any given season. It eventually concluded, after nine season, in 1983. A reboot is in the works.
Still a teen, Bateman went on to appear on TV’s Silver Spoons, Knight Rider, and Mr. Belvedere before landing a full-time part on Valerie. As an adult, he’s worked on Arrested Development, the Horrible Bosses movies, and Netflix’s Black Rabbit, in which he currently costars with Jude Law.
