Melissa Sue Anderson's (Missy) Interview on last DVD set

Okay this thread is to discuss Melissa Sue Anderson's interview on the last LHOTP DVD set.  :idance:



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I enjoyed Missy's interview as well.  She was asked questions so her interview wasn't as spontaneous as Melissa Gilbert's but it was still nice.

I think it's neat that Melissa's daughter is now watching the series.  Melissa said she really enjoys it.

How cool is it to watch a tv series you like and see your mom when she was young?  lol

She talked about Adam and how he had a good sense of humor too.  I did not know that Linwood Boomer (Adam) has directed 'Malcom in the Middle' and '3rd Rock from the Sun'.  Both of those shows are really funny.  

I really liked this interview. Melissa shared some good memories of being on the set and what fun it was. I think overall she is just more reserved than Melissa Gilbert is. I also felt she handled the Radames Pera situation very well, because of course Patrick asked her about it.

It is obvious that she was fond of Linwood, which is good because they had to play husband and wife on the show. I did know about his work on 3rd Rock from the Sun and Malcolm in the Middle, which shows that Linwood knows where he belongs best.

This interview must be a bit older though, because Patrick mentioned her returning to TV in the first Apocalypse movie and by the time I watched the interview, the sequel had already been on.

I'm glad that Melissa finally got a chance to be in front of LHOP fans and talk about what it was like for her.

bethandmanly wrote:

I also felt she handled the Radames Pera situation very well, because of course Patrick asked her about it.

I agree Cheryl.

What is the Radames Pera situation?? :unsure: *blushes*!

Elaine11 wrote:

What is the Radames Pera situation?? :unsure: *blushes*!

I haven't seen this, but I'm assuming Cheryl's refering to the time When Melissa and Radames (John Jr.) had some tension....Melissa came from a very religious family and she didn't want to kiss him.

Elaine11 wrote:

What is the Radames Pera situation?? :unsure: *blushes*!

Yeah, it's regarding this kiss.

Kiss Picture

What looked romantic on camera was not so romantic off camera. I guess Radames didn't like how Melissa didn't want to do the kissing scene. Melissa in her interview said that she was just a kid and here they had her starting a new relationship w/ a boy.. she wasn't ready for it... so the scene was hard to do.

Thanks guys!
Well good for Melissa for sticking to her values and such! I don't remember that episode though- which season?!

last episode of Season 2: Going Home

This is part of an interview w/ Radames Pera. You can read entire interview at http://www.prairiefans.com/

This part of the interview, he talks about his experience w/ Melissa Sue.

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As the series went on during my tenure, I admit having felt a little "stuck" with Melissa Sue Anderson, who was not a happy camper at that point in her life. Among other things, I think she, too, felt "out of place" in some way.

At the time I was incapable of understanding it, and just thought she
was an unpleasant person, but over the years I came to realize a few things about her (...and these are all unconfirmed conjecture on my part. I'll add my own disclaimer here, partly for fun: "The opinions expressed here are those Mr. Pera alone and do not reflect those of the other individuals involved, either living or dead.")

First, she was clearly and deeply unhappy about something in her life at the time. Second, her religious upbringing was in direct conflict with her professional life and experiences at the time, and third (and perhaps not least) was her knowledge that she would never be the real focus of the show, she was always going to be the satellite of the Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert's) character. This combination couldn't have felt very good for a budding young woman. I was so caught up in my own head myself then, it just looked to me that she was being unprofessional. I am referring specifically to the way she treated me and her sense of responsibility toward her character essentially.

We had a scene depicting our first kiss, and she refused to let our lips touch. Repeatedly she tried putting her hand up to her lips where she thought the camera couldn't see as our heads met, but that didn't work. She tried every which-a way to NOT to kiss me. And here we were, 75 people standing around in the hot afternoon sun while she was making a fuss. ("Was I limburger cheese?" I wondered, "Was it something I said?") I guess, in retrospect, it might have clashed with her interpretation of her religion, or... maybe she just didn't like me. Either way, if you're going to be an actor, your job is to suspend you own beliefs, if only for a few moments, in order to portray the truth of the character.

Well, anyway, the Director of this episode, Bill Claxton, had to pretend to yell at ME for not doing the scene right in order to communicate to her. He was in a tough position, Missy Anderson was one of The Stars of the show, and she had a reputation, early on, of being occasionally "difficult" around that fact. So he couldn't call her down for it, that would have been neither politically correct, nor, as he astutely deduced, very effective with her either. Suffice it to say that it was one of the most awkward moments of my career. I was just wondering why the heck she couldn't just do the scene!? But now, I can only imagine the discomfort and pain she must have been in to have felt compelled to behave like that in the situation. Poor thing. Once I got wind of the fact that Michael had decided to develop a romance between the two characters on the show, I did my professional best to befriend her, get to know her, anything a pro would do to create some comfort and trust between us so we might serve the production better, but to no avail. Perhaps I seemed like a "big bad boy" to her in her world at the time, and she just couldn't get past that. I'm sure I don't really understand the half of it, though.

I love Melissa Sue, but I always did wonder why she was upset about her character being less played out than Lauras.

If she read the books, she should have expected even less parts than she actually got.

They added alot of content with Mary by having her marry and teach, whereas in the books, she just lived her life out with Ma and Pa.

I agree Rose. Another thing.... I don't understand why she was shocked when Michael Landon told her they were going to make an episode where she went blind.... playing the character of Mary Ingalls... you know that's coming...

Another thing about the interview I just remembered.... Melissa talks about the episode "Whisper Country" and she says that she did not like what she did in that episode...
I'm talking about the ending where she goes and gives Ms. Peal a piece of her mind... Melissa says she thought Mary was way too out of line in that scene?

I thought the scene was good...

Quote :

I thought the scene was good...

So did I. I thought it was an important scene in the development of the Mary character. It showed Mary asserting herself and standing up for what she believed in. It was one of those moments when a parent lets go and lets the child handle a situation in an adult manner. Pa was there in the room, but he let Mary fight her own battle.

ChristinaAL wrote:

Edit: I also read the rest of Radame Pera's interview. I have to say, I was a little surprised by some of the things he said. He seemed a bit judgemental of several people on the show (besides MSA, Victor French is one I picked up on), saying some things about his opinions of them that I would've thought were private details.

I agree. Some of the things that he said were uncalled for, and ungentlemanly at best. It was as if he finally had a chance to take a jab, and was going to use the opportunity to do so. It lowered my opinion of him quite a bit.

I actually loved the ending of Whisper Country. I thought that Mary was so feisty!!

ChristinaAL wrote:

Thanks Carol! I'm going to go read the rest of the interview right now. Boy, it seems he was really hard on her. I'm sure she was nervous about doing the scene - she was really young at the time, younger than he was, and maybe didn't know how to react to that situation. But thank you, I'm off to read more now! :)

I didn't like this portion of his interview at all. You know what they say, "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." I think that's part of why I always wanted to see a MSA interview--to give her time to address that issue. It seemed to me that she didn't care for him at all, and it seems she has a good reason.

I belonged to his Yahoo Group for a while and I just didn't care for his attitude, so I left.

I bought the last three movies etc. on Wednesday! I'd been looking for them for thirty or less and couldn't find it. I went into Farm and Fleet and they had a rack of dvds and had all of the LHotP seasons as well as the first two Highway to Heaven seasons.


It didn't make tons of sense to me that Melissa mentioned that she was surprised that she was going to be going blind because at the beginning she made it sound as though she had read the books!


I really enjoyed both of the interviews on the dvds. They were really neat to watch.

When I was checking out the interview on Youtube that Carol posted of MG, I found this 7 part interview with Melissa Sue. (I'm assuming this is the one on the dvd?). Sorry if I'm repeating sth that's already been posted, but I thought I'd share for those of you who didn't know about this! I was so pleasantly surprised by her. I know she's a more 'serious' girl than MG, but I found her to be very likeable, and I thought she was quite forthcoming. It was so neat to hear what she thought of everything, and to watch her eyes light up at the mentioning of some things. I was amazed at the compliments she gave Matt Lab...well deserved I'm sure, but she didn't seem to talk about anyone else like that!

I'm only posting the first part...the other 6 are pretty easy to find once you're on the site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iF-eS-8LGQ

Well, I liked Melissa's interpretation of Mary in "LHOTP". I was much like Mary was as girl and a teen. But I always noticed that she was not happy in the show, or that she seems to be "let aside" from the others...This is clear when she never goes to LHOTP reunions.

I like a lot that she was a religious person and that she would stuck to her religious and ethic values when running the show, but it was so evident that she was not so at ease than Melissa Gilbert acting in LHOTP. And I also noticed she was a little jealous of "Laura" who was by far more popular than her. Even Nellie robbed to her the attention of the public, for she was "the bad one" and people was interested in her.
:think:


As for the "blind" thing...My! It was excpected to happen, for pity sake! And, oh, yes, Michael Landon never stuck to the books and could change storylines as he liked them to be...But we all here knows his taste for melodramatic and tear-jerker stories..He wouldn't let Mary's blindness outside his epies! NEVER! :shifty: Besides, Mary's character got much more interesting after her blindness, since she was doing smething REALLY different . I don't really understand why she was complaining. NO REASON AT ALL.

Vanesa.

This is the interview from the DVDs, Amy. I liked this interview too, but she is not as outgoing and charming as MG.

We've talked a little bit about the Radames Pera situation and this is where again you can see a big difference in MSA and MG. MG hadn't even begun dating when she began a relationship with Dean Butler's Almanzo. And if you watched her interview, she actually speaks of how strange it was to have Dean staring at her the way he did in "Sweet Sixteen" in front of the school in Curry. She said she had to focus on being Laura, not Melissa. Maybe this did not come as easily to MSA as it did to MG, but they both played their characters well and it was nice to finally hear from MSA about her LHOP memories.

Cheryl

Vanesa wrote:

Besides, Mary's character got much more interesting after her blindness, since she was doing smething REALLY different.

That's a very good point, Vanesa.