Netflix is bringing the American frontier experience to life with its “Little House on the Prairie” series.
Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s book series about growing up in the American West in the 1800s, the new series is described as “part hopeful family drama, part epic survival tale and part origin story of the American West.”
The first season sees the Ingalls family — including Laura Ingalls, her “Pa,” Charles Ingalls, her “Ma,” Caroline Ingalls and her sister Mary — leave their life of comforts in Wisconsin as they settle in the open plains of Independence, Kansas.
The series, helmed by showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine (“The Boys”), wasn’t filmed in the American midwest, however, and in fact, didn’t shoot in the U.S. at all.
Instead, “Little House on the Prairie” was shot entirely in Canada, precisely in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Winnipeg made for ripe filming ground for the Netflix series due to its landscapes and tall grass, which Sonnenshine told CBC sold the “untouched” look they wanted for the prairie.
The province’s weather was a battle in and of itself, however, with production not starting up until June, and with production came the challenges of extreme weather, including floods, tornadoes and lightning.
“We’re going through it, just like the Ingalls,” Sonnenshine said. “We get a little taste of what it was like on the prairie, although, of course, we have lots of modern conveniences.”
And while the grasslands of Winnipeg made for the ideal backdrop, if not the easiest production location, the world of “Little House on the Prairie” also comes alive from the detailing and thoughtful touches put into the costumes and sets.
“When you think of the prairie, you picture vast landscapes of rolling hills and grass and sky, but it’s also so much about these small, very intimate details,” Sonnenshine said in Netflix’s extensive breakdown of the page-to-screen details. “That is our goal: to capture the vastness of the prairie but also all the details that make the book so special for people, whether they’re kids or adults.”
Those details are impressive both in number and the amount of thought that was put into them. For one example, take a look at the costuming department’s work on Laura’s hat, which incorporates a different, seasonal piece of something she would have found in her life.
“We tried to make this almost with that sort of child wonder, where she found a feather out in one of her adventures,” Costume designer Mitchell Travers explained in a behind-the-scenes video, “or she found a piece of a chicken bone, or something that would fascinate a child, and she’s popped it in to decorate her hat.”
That same attention to detail can be spotted in the Ingalls cabin, which is built with natural materials, with no nails or hinges to break the immersion.
“One of the challenges of building the cabin was doing it in the way that the Ingalls family had done it, which was with more nails, with more pegs, and really with all natural material that they sourced and cut down and made and milled,” production designer Jonah Markowitz explains. “And we wanted to do that and honor that, so we actually built the cabin that way. There were no nails in our cabin. There was all wood pegs. The door was made from solid wood with wood pegs. No hinges. It was a fun challenge for everyone. I think it shows.”
Even the original “Little House” TV show didn’t shoot where it was set in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Instead, the series, which ran from 1974-1983, was shot in Simi Valley, Calif.
The “Little House” reboot stars Alice Halsey (“Lessons in Chemistry,” “Days of Our Lives”) as Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the semi-autobiographical “Little House” books, and serves as the audience’s window into life on the frontier. Luke Bracey (“Elvis”) and Crosby Fitzgerald (“Palm Royale”) star as Charles and Caroline Ingalls, respectively, while Skywalker Hughes (“Joe Pickett”) plays Mary Ingalls.
The series has also scored a Season 2 renewal from Netflix. For a further look at how the “Little House on the Prairie” filming locations brought the American frontier to Winnipeg, check out the behind-the-scenes images from Season 1 below.
