How Jason Bateman Got Red Hot Revenge On the Cast of ‘Little House on the Prairie’
Never, ever mess with Jason Bateman.
While chatting with Sean Evans on Hot Ones from First We Feast, the actor was promoting his new Netflix series Black Rabbit when the subject of Little House on the Prairie came up.
Bateman joined the show in the later seasons as James Cooper Ingalls. In the story arc, James and his sister Cassandra (played by Missy Francis) were adopted by Charles and Caroline Ingalls (Michael Landon and Karen Grassle) after their parents died. James became a surrogate son to Charles and had several storylines centered around growing up, adjusting to a new family, and bonding with the Ingalls children.
But it wasn’t just James who had to do a little adjusting. As the new kid in Walnut Grove, Bateman was subjected to a little hazing from the old school prairie dwellers.
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“Fact or fiction: When you were on Little House on the Prairie, the older kids in the cast played an April Fool’s joke on you by telling you that your character had died?,” asked Evans.
“Untrue,” said Batman. “What they did do is they pinned me down on the ground, straddled me with knees on my shoulders, and gave me noogies — or whatever it is they call it — on my chest. On my chest! Like I was a front door!,” Batement explained to the hot sauce aficionado.
“There was a hazing ritual on Little House on the Prairie!,” exclaimed Evans in shock.
“I went to the makeup artist. I said, ‘Put a big black and blue mark all over my chest,'” laughed Bateman. “And then I went to their parents. I said, ‘Look what your kids did to me.’ That was good. I got them in trouble.”
“So there you go. You got the last laugh,” said Evans.
“I got skills,” boasted Bateman.
And that was the last time anyone took issue with little James ever again. Probably.
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