Megyn Kelly’s distinction between 5-year-old and the 15-year-old girls pursued by Jeffrey Epstein didn’t sit well with “Little House on the Prairie” star Melissa Gilbert, who addressed Kelly’s comments on Instagram.
The former Screen Actors Guild president shared a photo Saturday of herself at age 15 and wrote, “So, I debated posting this but, I feel compelled to share. After seeing many women’s posts with the hashtags #iwasfifteen #imfifteen #iwasachild, I decided to google search myself at that age and see what came up. And this is some of what I found … and now, at this age, at this time, I am actually nauseated.”
“The girl on vacation in Hawaii with her family, is the same girl who was expected to ‘fall in love with’ and kiss a man on film who was several years older than she was. Through the lens of today, this is shocking. I have no words other than to say, ‘I WAS A CHILD.’ ‘I WAS FIFTEEN.’”
“And I was the good news. Thank God my mom and Michael [Landon, “Little House” star, director and producer] and so many others were there to make sure I was safe. Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all? I am so fortunate (Sort of) . Many other young women aren’t. @megynkelly you need to be careful with your words,” she concluded.
Gilbert also shared a photo of herself with Dean Butler, who starred on the series as her character’s eventual husband, Almanzo James Wilder. When the plot line began, Butler was 23 years old.
On the November 12 episode of her Sirius XM program “The Megyn Kelly Show,” the host claimed, “[Epstein] liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds.” Kelly and her husband share two sons and one daughter, who is in her teens.
“But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby,” she added. “There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
While speaking to People in 2024, Butler admitted he wished the age difference between himself and Gilbert had not been quite so vast. “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.
“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. Laura was 10 years younger than Almanzo. But from the perspective of playing it, 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.”
