Wilder - Laura is BACK on Your TV!

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Wilder is back in the Under the Influence feed. A brand new Little House on the Prairie just landed on Netflix and obviously Glynnis and I had thoughts. I talked to producer Joy Gorman Wettels, who had her whole team listening to Wilder while they made this show, about how she spent years getting the rights from the Friendly family, why this version centers Laura instead of Pa, how they wove in the Osage story, and why Laura Ingalls Wilder might be one of the few things that can actually get people talking to each other again. Little House on the Prairie is on Netflix July 9th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Love you. Happy reading. Wilder fans. Joe here, and we are back with a very, very special episode of Wilder that we are hoping will kick off a whole new series of Wilder. Laura's back. She's backed on your TVs. There is a new adaptation of Little House in the Prairie on Netflix right now, and Glennis and I have been diligently watching it. And I also talked to one of the producers. Also, quick personal note, My brand new book, The Parisian Heist, drops this week. If you love stories about unsung women in history, which I know that you do because we all love Laura so much, you will adore this fun. The Parisian heist tells a story of Joe Van Gogh, who is Vincent's sister-in-law, who inherited hundreds of his worthless paintings and dedicated her life to making him a household name.

Joe is the reason that Vincent Van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all time. He is a complete badass. I adore her. And I promise you, after reading the Parisian heist, you will never, ever look at a Van Gogh painting the same way ever again. Okay. Now back to Wilder. Hello, Glynnis. Hello, Joe. It's been a long time since you and I have come together to talk about Laura Engels Wilder. But it also feels like five minutes ago. You know, it was four years ago right now that we were. We were, yeah, that we were finalizing our trip details. So, and you were quite pregnant. I was pregnant. Yeah. I had, I mean, I only had two children outside of my body at that point, which is insane. I mean, it's insane the reach that Wilder has had since then the millions of people that have listened to Wilder. And the number of people that come up to me, and I'm sure this happens to you, too, at events or at book reading.

and are just like, oh my God, I binged that series. I binged it with my daughter, with my sister, with my mom. It's incredible. Yeah. I love, I love hearing about Wilder because obviously it was such a huge passion project. I'm so proud of it. I think it holds up. I think she's Evergreen, and I think the questions that we asked and sort of strove to answer with it.

remain relevant. And also it was so much fun. Like it was really and, um, oh my God. Like a huge amount of work too. I just, as you were just saying that I just had this flashback to remember we got the date of the first pageant wrong. And we, we were waiting for, Emily and I were waiting for you to land. And we were like literally sitting in the car and you went to like, curl your very pregnant body into the back of the car. And we had to take off across Minnesota to make this pageant and then rebook our hotel into some crazy motel in the middle of nowhere. So I just, I forgot. That was a murder.

That was a real murder hotel is motel. That is what that was. Yeah. Yeah, that was a real creepy motel. Yeah. People were nice there, but it was so, it's such a funny, like, as we both know, because you and I have done so many great road trips together, but that, that whole podcast was both about

little house books which are you know as we said in the write-up about Wilder like Jack Kerouac

but make it a young girl and also we were on the road in America in 2022 which was you know

a wildly similar and also very different moments so yeah I love that podcast actually we should go

back and listen to it I haven't listen to it since we did it but I'm well I mean I think that this is kind of

our big reveal that we're We're going to start doing some new episodes of this podcast. Not every week. Not every week. But, you know, we feel like there's still so much more to say. And, you know, we're dropping, I'm going to drop this in the Under the Influence feed and in the wilder feed because there is a new adaptation of Little House in the Prairie coming out this week, actually. And I thought it'd be a lot of fun if you and I rewatched. some old episodes and then watch some new episodes and talk about how they relate to all the things that we learned on the road and also the world right now. Yeah. And I don't, it's a huge,

huge thing that there's a new series based on the books coming out. Because as you and I both know it, as I think we talked about in the podcast, that the friendly family, their last name is friendly, and they are friendly, have the right. Very friendly. Yeah, and lovely people. And we're very supportive of the podcast. We're really fortunate. And I think that speaks well to the podcast, actually. They're very, very careful with the rights to the book and that they have allowed someone else to make a new adaptation of the Little House books is really a big deal.

This is not sort of like a casual endeavor. These were not easy rights to get. They did not allow them out into the world casually. So you've seen parts of it. I have not seen it yet. But I'm excited. But you will. But you will.

And today's episode is just kind of a teaser for the show. We're talking to, I'm talking to, because Glynis has been on the road so much. You just got back from Paris where you were doing your writing conference retreat, The Blue Hour, which is incredible. And so I did this interview solo with Joy Gorman Webber. who's one of the producers of the new adaptation of Little House. And we talk about all of it. We talk about how hard she had to fight to get the rights to do this adaptation.

And, you know, also all of the changes that she's planning on making in this. And one of the things that I'm so excited about is that this new series is told through the eyes of Laura and not Paw. And I think that's going to make this a very different show. Oh, yeah. I mean, you and I both know. I think what a huge challenge and what a huge risk to take two properties that are so deeply beloved because the books are deeply beloved and the show is equally beloved. And sometimes people love one or the other. Sometimes people such as myself love both, but have very strong feelings about them.

You know, we talked a lot in the episodes about the television show about how. it became sort of the Michael Landon show, which... It did, because it did. It was so much Michael Landon. No. It was very Michael Landon. And Laura sort of became a support, the main support character, but a support character in it. So as people who've read the books know, the books are Laura's story.

You know, you're seeing the world through Laura's eyes almost exclusively, except for a handful of instances in the long winter. And so I think I know from when we talk to the friendlies when we were doing the podcast, that they really felt strongly that they wanted any updated version of the books to align more closely with the books themselves. And so it's exciting to know that that's that was the goal here and that you, I think, found that to be the reality of it. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's true. to tell you, here's a fun, fun tidbit that I was going to wait until we got on the podcast to tell you, Joy, the producer I'm talking to today, is a huge wilder fan. Oh, I love hearing that.

And they, she listened to all the episodes. She had, you know, everyone involved in this project listening to the episodes. So it's just, it's so fun to see the reach that this podcast has had. Yeah. And that the books in the show still have. I mean, that show, the first one, the original one, is still on TV everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. I see it somewhere every time I'm in a hotel room. That Law and Order SVU and the office.

It's funny. I think the office is surpassed Seinfeld. That's a whole other podcast. That's a whole other podcast. I love hearing that because I really, you know, I could talk about Laura Ingalls probably for the rest of my life. I'm well aware. Yes, I know you are. She's up there with New York real estate as a subject matter.

of which I will never be exhausted. I should go back and read the books. I was thinking about them the other day. Well, next time you come up here to the Catskills, why don't you read them to the girls? I would love that. That'd be fun, right? Yeah, let's do that.

I would love that so much. I was thinking about the long winter so much this winter because we had such a long, hard winter in New York. The longest, hardest one I can remember, you know, in decades. And I was thinking about the long winter and how it's still our reference for so much. So many things. You know, talking about everyone is lying to you,

your novel that is set in Tradwife world and the overlap of the sort of Tadwife fantasy with the Little House. Oh, yeah. Perception of Little House. Though if you read the books, even through Laura's eyes, as you and I both know, the reality of that is so unappealing. Remember when we stood.

In front of the dugout, in front of the creek? Yeah. In front of the creek. And we were both like, this is awful. This is terrible. Imagine getting your period in a dugout by a creek where you've got dirt and worms hanging over. Like, I was like, oh, I'm going to. A period in the back of a wagon.

Oh, my God. No. Imagine getting your period back then. Oh, my God. Right. Just doing anything. Bathroom. Jesus.

Imagine having sex in that one room cabin. I mean, because we went to the cabin. We went to the cat. that tiny Charlie, Charlie took his first steps there. Charlie took his first steps in that cabin. You just realize that we think, and certainly the show in the books, perjected and promoted the idea of innocent. You know, you never in the books, no one ever goes to the bathroom in the books.

And in the show, the rare times they show the outhouse, it sort of played for last, particularly with Willie. But, like, the reality. of how awful it was, but also, like, that Laura and Mary and Carrie and Grace or any child living in that environment would have no illusions over their parents' sex lives, you know? No. Or how children were conceived. Or came into this world?

Mm-mm. Yeah. Or the noises or smells that come around it or, you know, birthing. The whole thing, like just the exposure to the realities, the very, very brutal. realities of life. They were so pushed up against constantly. And so this sort of illusion of innocence and fantasy is so misplaced. And certainly the books, I mean, we spoke a lot of that,

this on Wilder, how the books, when you sort of understand more about Laura's actual life, felt like a sort of extended therapeutic recession she was giving to herself over her childhood. And in that light, the more fantastical elements of it or the sweeter, more cozy elements of it, certainly make more sense. But if you do that road trip and you're just like standing beside a creek inside of like a little indent, thinking this dugout I fantasized about at age eight, is really deeply unappealing. This is very deeply unappealing. I can't believe people lived like this, 150.

years ago. It's not that long ago. This is awful. Thank God for running water and vaccine. Yeah. Thank God for it all. Thank God for it all. Well, I think that the new adaptation is going to dig into some of that, but we're going to find out. We're going to find out. We're going to be talking about it. We'll have joy on again. And both of us will talk to her along with the woman who wrote the series and hopefully some of the cast members of the old series and the new series. So we're going to be bringing it audio. Can I just say, just listening to you to describe that, how many women were involved in bringing this to the screen is really encouraging. You know what I mean? Like, it's really wonderful and such a, listen, I have no shade to Michael Landon. I am a Michael Landon Stan. I don't. Same.

Same. The most charming person on screen. So handsome. So handsome. That show was so fully envisioned and. produced by men, whereas the books, you know, were Laura and Rose. And their editor, whose name escapes me, but it was a very, very famous children's editor, was a woman. And so I like this idea of women being the people behind this new updated version.

And I'm very interested to see how that manifests on the screen. And we will. So here, so with that, so with that, here's my conversation with joy. Hey, Joy, how you doing? Hi, Joe. Thanks for having me. Oh, my God. I mean, the problem is that I could talk to you for 19 and a half hours, and yet we don't have that much time, but I might have to have you back on. Once the show actually releases, I mean, there's so many reasons that I'm having you on today, but one of them, the biggest one is that you're a producer on the new adaptation of Little House on the Breast. Prairie. Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. And this is a project, obviously, that you know, is nearer and dear to my heart, a given the wild art podcast. But it's also something that is so close to you and that has been in the works for such a long time. You guys acquired the rights to this in the middle of the pandemic, right? Yes. Yes. In 2020. And I actually initially had chased the rights down in like 20, 2018, I had heard that they might be coming up. And then I heard again in 2020 that they were coming up. And I finally got to meet Trip Friendly, who controls the underlying rights in 2020. And wooed him and tricked him into letting me be his partner on this and putting this together in a whole new way.

Yeah, because, and we, you know, if you're a fan of the Wilder podcast, if you listen to the past episode, obsessively. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. The friendly family has had the rights for a very long time. And they're very protective of the legacy. And we know this because we worked with them on the podcast.

We, you know, really wanted to make sure they felt good about what we were doing. So how did you woo trip? How did you convince Tripp that it was time to make this show? Well, you know, I think he, I think Tripp felt it was time and he was meeting a lot of different producers, you know. And in our first meeting, what we talked about was, you know, his father, you know, Tripp's father, for our listeners, Tripp's father originated the Michael Landon series and sort of gave it over to Michael Landon in a way. And Michael Landon really created an incredible piece of pop culture that is inspired by the books, but really is much more Paws, you know, Paws story where Pah is this incredible hero and the center of it. And Tripp, I think, really felt that it was time to tell the story from Laura's point of view, which is exactly what I had dreamed of and wanted to do. is like, you know, why would this, you know, incredibly important piece of literature, this book series that was written and created by a woman, a 60 plus woman, by the way, when she wrote these books during the Depression.

Was in her 60s when she wrote these books, which is a fact that I think we brought up again and again in the Wilder podcast because we were just blown away by that fact. And so just there's so many layers of inspiration to what Laura did and what these books have done being out in the culture for 100 years and how differently they've been interpreted by so many people. And when I sat down with Trip for the first time, there were a few things that we really agreed on. One is there aren't enough father-daughter stories in the culture. You know, and there really wasn't, you know, During the pandemic, it was really apparent. There just wasn't a lot to watch at home for parents and kids to watch together. I feel that Hollywood had kind of like been abandoning young protagonists and the kind of movies that we grew up on with Stand By Me and E.T. and Goonies. I watched the Sandlot last night. Oh, my God. Such a good one.

I know. I know. Yeah. And we're going to do Stand By Me tonight. But then we're also going to start watching the series together. Oh, my God, I can't wait. But my friend Dana Fox and I had been making a show with John M. Chu And the team who ultimately became the Wicked Team called Home Before Dark on Apple.

And that had just come out. And Tripp had watched that show and really loved it and loved that it was based on a real child who was 10 years old. and a journalist. And we were very true to that child's voice. And Tripp saw the comparisons between Laura and Paa and Matt and Hildy in our show. So I think that was one piece that was sort of a big help that Tripp knew that we would approach it differently. And then, you know, I said to him, you know, obviously we were in the – it was the summer of 2020 the first time I met him. And I said it's really important to me to tell a more 360 view of what was happening in the American West.

And I think that we could be courageous about it because we're telling it through the eyes of a child, you know. But when I went back to read the books, which like anything in 1932 are racist and problematic. Massively, massively. And reading them to my daughter, who was eight at the time and trying to decide how to read them to her, right? Because when you hit on the more problematic parts of the text, you don't want to censor that. You want to explain to the child where that's coming from. And so what really was my North Star when I reread the books was that, in Little House on the Prairie book, the third book, she says, and I'm going to botch the quote, guys, because it's not in front of me right now.

But she said, but she says if we didn't want to know them, you know, if we didn't want to know the Indians, why did we come here? This is Indian country. And so if an eight-year-old could say that to her parents and if a 65-year-old woman could write that she said that to her parents, then the core of these books was good and that there was an adaptation ready to be made for this time and, you know, for this moment in history. And I also asked Tripp, you know, how do you feel about deeply researching and including the Osage side of the story? and could we have perhaps like a little girl who's Osage or, you know, a mixed family, you know, and he said that had always been his dream to be able to tell the Osage side of the story. And so he was very much in support of that.

And so as producers, Tripp and Dana and I really started to look at how we could approach this even before we found. Rebecca Sun and Shine, who was the perfect person to actually adapt these books and create the show. And, you know, I started with Dr. Robert Warrior, who was like the leading Osage scholar at University of Kansas. And, and, you know, over the years, we just did a lot of deep research and talked to a ton of different consultants. We met, you know, Osage writers. There was an Osage writer named Carter Christensen in our room who really contributed to that story just from her own family history. And so we knew that in order to make a new little house on the prairie, we didn't want to compete with the absolutely beautiful piece of popular culture that Michael Landon created and that ran 222 episodes or however longer it ran. Because that is not, you know, that's just not how TV is made today. But we wanted to do something that no previous adaptation had tried, which is fill in the blanks that that Laura's books couldn't have possibly, you know, told. So we went to all the surrounding.

She also kind of imagined in her lifetime, I think. Exactly. I mean, and even though she had perspective, she was writing, you know, she was writing during the Depression, right? In 32, she started writing these books and was, you know, using these stories to inspire people to say, you can live in poverty. You can survive on love and community. You can believe in your family and your siblings and your parents. And you can get through the worst of things. But she was looking like we all do, you know, at our childhood.

She was looking at her childhood through rose-colored glasses, you know. in order to try to inspire an audience of kids and families. You know, the books were written for children. And when I was reading Prairie Fires, which is really sort of the Holy Grail of all Laura Ingalls Wilder history in my book, and I know you and Glynis agree, Laura had said, I told the truth, but I didn't tell the whole truth. And to me, that was the North Star. Like, in going out to find the writer that could create this show, that was, to me, just opened up the aperture and allowed us to fill in the blanks

where Laura couldn't have possibly when she was writing books in 1932. How can we, you know, come up with a fictionalized yet historically relevant and somewhat accurate, you know, fictional series. And so it really takes a village and a lot of obsessed little house fans to come together and make a show like this. I'll bet it does. And he found that. You searched Far and White to find them. Exactly.

And then you found me. And you're like, wow, I really need to talk to Joe about this. right when the show was coming out. So I think it's really interesting that, you know, this was began amidst the pandemic. One, because Glynis and I did Wilder just as we were coming out of the pandemic. And we made so many comparisons of Laura's stories to the time we were living in, which obviously when the books came out, you know, the depression is happening. but then when Laura was actually living these stories, we're going through so many trials and tribulations of American expansion.

And so there's just, I think there's so many parallels between the time that Laura was living in as a child, the time that she was writing, and then the moment right now, and not just post-pandemic, but I think the world feels like it's in more of an upheaval than ever before. And I'm sure that during those two time periods that, you know, Laura felt that as well. But it truly feels similar now. I want to dig into that after we have a quick break. Great. Okay.

Okay. We're back. Why do you feel like now is such a great moment to bring this story back to people? Well, you know, one of the, something that Tripp told me in our first meeting is that in In times of hardship, the book sales sort of spike and interest in the property and conversation online spikes in times of hardship, times of war, times of, you know, the pandemic, etc. And I think for me, the reason that I wanted this to happen between, you know, from 2020 until now is how much these books represent, you know, unity and really bridging differences between people

and just trying to live on love when there's nothing else. And it sounds sort of trite, but it's simple, but it's profound. You know, it's like we are just surrounded by images of what. what we don't have or what we can't achieve. And especially our children just have like clips of every skincare product and everything coming at them. All the time. It's so gross.

Yep. All the time. And it's so gross. And could we make simplicity and living on the land and could we make that cool? You know, could we make that something that's attractive? You know, I really felt like that was sort of the upside of the pandemic, right? Was that a lot of us got to just be together in our houses with our families. And we were trying to learn to bake bread and compost and have a garden.

And if you're me, you failed at those things. But I did figure out how to get them to make a little house on the prairie. So, you know. I did the like, you did the thing. You did the important of that. Yeah. But I think that we're in a time where there's a lot of misinformation

coming at everyone. And when I was looking at all of this material and realized that post-Civil War, flyers were all over the country saying free land in the West, you know, flyers were in Norway. That's free land in the West. People were being recruited to come and build a town on occupied land where Native Americans lived. And were they bad people for believing this advertisement that there was free land? And so we wanted to tell a story where,

everyone is flawed, everyone is trying to survive, everyone is poor, really, you know, they are either getting their land taken away, or they've been spit out by the Civil War, or, you know, everyone is in search of something, and they all have good intentions, and they all have children to protect, right? And so what would it look like if we brought all those people together in Independence, Kansas? And we were pretty true to the Little House on the Prairie book in terms of Dr. Tan is their doctor. He was in that book. He was a really memorable character. And he was. Yeah. And can you explain who Dr. Tan is to people who may not have read read it? Because we talk a lot about him in Wilder. Yes, Dr. Tan was a black doctor who cared for both white settlers and the Osages who lived in Independence, Kansas.

And so, you know, that was pretty progressive for the time. You know, even reading that in a book in 1932 was probably pretty progressive. And so that was another just exciting person in history that we wanted to have. highlight and make an important part of the series, you know. And I think, you know, I don't think Laura had access to truly understanding what was going on. With, you know, with the land deal between the Osages and the U.S. government. But our writers' room did a ton of research around that so that we could, and we also brought in a lot of Osage experts to help us with it.

And we did our best representation of what really might have been happening in that time. In terms of when you read the book, Laura has a memory of what it was like, but she's not using specific people or words that she didn't know. You know, we have the benefit of 100 years of history to have done that research and kind of filled in the blanks in our own way. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, there's a lot of issues in the Little House books and even in Little House series of the original series as well. But we also, I think what we have to remember is that we have so much more information now and that we have the ability to fill. in these gaps. And so it would be a disservice to the narrative to not fill them in and then to not have a conversation about the original text and why they didn't have that knowledge. Because I

don't think that the individual men who are seeing these signs, these poor, and they're impoverished, mostly they'll be impoverty, saw these signs and they're like, oh, they told me there's free land out there. I don't think that they're necessarily all of them going there as occupiers, but I think, you know, the blame is heaped on the government here that pushed those men. And so I think seeing seeing it in shades of gray is so important for the way that we look back on history these days. And for the way that we look at each other now, you know, I mean, it is so easy when we live in our phones to, just read awful comments, to write awful comments, to look at 30 seconds of a clip of something

and decide and judge someone who's from a different part of the country or a different part of the world. And it's an epidemic. Like a hatred is an epidemic. And we kind of thought that like, sure, is our independence, Kansas a little bit more utopian than, it probably was in 1869. Of course it is. But so were Laura's books because we are trying to make a truthful yet hopeful story that families can watch together

that will open up a conversation about history and about complicated, you know, complicated characters who are dealing with class and race and ownership and survival. And how could we do that in a way that families from age 8 to 80 would want to sit in front of the television and watch this together, but not have it be sort of a guilty pleasure that it's just made for kids and it's dumbed down, you know? And that's not an easy tone to strike, but I think we did. I think we did it.

I'm very excited. I'm very excited. I'm very excited. I'm going to know if you agree. I'm going to start tonight. I'm going to start to meet. I'm going to start to me. And I will say that we are recording this before the show comes out and releasing it the week the show releases. And so hopefully everyone in the audience is going to watch along with us. And we can talk about it on the over the influence substack. And, you know, I'd love to have you back when a lot when a lot more people have watched it to you. So we can. have a really vibrant conversation. I can actually solicit questions from the audience. Oh, how fun. I think that'd be a lot of fun, right? And I can't wait for you to meet Rebecca Sun and Shine because, like, just being the person who really, she was the person, like, who had to write this show. And it was, it's, I'm excited for you to meet her and talk to her because it was not easy to find the person who could courageously face the history of these books and this woman head on, you know, and just had such deep love for it where she could build a new version of this world, you know, and I'm excited for you to hear her perspective on it too. Yeah, no, I can't. I really, really can't wait to talk to her. What were you looking for? in a writer? And was that difficult to find when you first set out to do it?

It was the first and foremost, every single time I spoke to an agent or a writer, you had to be obsessed with these books. It couldn't be a job for anyone. Like, we weren't meeting anyone who was not obsessed with these books. And there was also, you know, with a big piece of IP like this, you need somebody who actually will be available and make it their priority because there's a lot of stakeholders in it. But ultimately it was the courage to look at our history, not with shame and fear. but with a healthy interrogation, you know, and the ability to build a world where nobody was all wrong and

nobody was all right. Ha was a man who was very flawed, who had a beautiful heart, and he was a poet and an artist, and he made a lot of mistakes as a farmer, as a businessman, you know, and to us, It felt like, you know, that is a man that more men are going to relate to than the perfect pa who saves every single person in every episode of television. And that was another thing that had hit me when I was watching the old show with my daughter who was eight at the time and she was loving it. And then by like episode 10, she said, why is pa always saving everybody? Yes, yes. And, you know, were you able to say because Michael Landon created the show?

I was like, have you seen how hot he is? I know. Like, you've seen him with his abs. You've seen him crying with his shirt off, right? I mean, he has like no tan lines. None. And he's a farmer. Yeah.

No, it was really interesting to hear that perspective because I knew that we needed to find a writer who understood these characters as historical figures, as deep complex characters, but also could respect that there are millions and millions and millions of people who are obsessed with the Michael Landon show. And we do not want to alienate them. We want to invite them, you know, to a new look at these books and at the Ingalls family who lived in history, you know. And that took a courageous writer.

And the thing I think that was so interesting about Rebecca is she's mostly written horror and genre, you know. And so she wasn't the obvious choice for this material. And you really had to look at her horror and genre work on the boys and on Archive 81 and Vampire Diaries and see that she had really deep character. work inside those, those, those projects. And then meeting her, just knowing that the books were in her bones, the books made her a writer. It was the combination of those things that we realized

she could create a world and have sort of enough distance and perspective. Because we were all living, We are all living in a lot of guilt all the time, right? About our history. All the time. All the time. Like, we know as, you know, progressive white women, we're feeling terrible about everything all the time. Girl, when I would play,

51% of the country doesn't feel terrible all the time. Well, exactly. And we wanted to make something for everyone. We don't want it to be. I think that's so important. A hundred. Yes, because I think that it needs to be the tent, I say this all time, the tent needs to be bigger, not smaller. Yes.

And you just need to see the humanity. I mean, Mr. Edwards was a Civil War veteran from Tennessee, you know. And like we were trying to show the humanity of every kind of. of person who might have been able to come together in Independence, Kansas in 1869. And we looked at the census so that it made sense that these people could have existed, you know. And Rebecca had sort of the courage to look at it with that bit of distance like she does when she builds, you know, a world that's science fiction, you know. And I think that that was helpful. Yeah, I really couldn't agree more. And I try to write my books for everyone as well, you know, despite the fact that I'm a raging progressive feminist. And yet, I want to bring people into these stories. I want all people to feel comfortable reading, all women, really, to feel comfortable reading them, sharing them with friends and also, you know, giving them something to chew on that they might not have thought about before had they not.

not felt invited to see this kind of content. No, exactly. And we just felt like there was a way to sort of Trojan horse outreach and unity inside this property, you know, and bridge a gap that is, that's a feeling like a really wide chasm in not only our country, but in the world. world, you know, and obviously just to be able to create conversation, you know, where people who are really different and people who are feeling robbed and have every right to feel robbed can reach out and talk to each other and find solutions, you know? And so that's what you try to do with this show. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what we need so much more of. And you also tried to do so much more, and you did so much more with this show.

And one of the things that I love, and this is what I want to talk about after we have one last break, is that the original series, the original television series, and I'm apologizing to anyone who can hear my three-year-old wailing outside. But, you know, this is the realities of American, of American Summer. Of American Summer. She's fine. I promise. She's perfectly fine. She just wants a lemonade. And someone will give it to her, but not me.

So cute. She's cute. She's cute and she's a menace to society. But, you know, the original show was so much the Michael Landon project. He was the star. He was the creator. He was like it was just, it was all paw all the time. And the books were very focused on Laura. And your new show, we are looking at things much more from Laura's perspective. And I want to dig into that after after our last break. Okay, cool. Okay, we are back. Let's talk about this perspective shift because it's one that I welcome, not that I don't want to watch Michael Land and crying with his shirt off all the time. I do, okay? It's a meme that I send to a month. Like once a week, all right?

No shame. But because they are books written by a woman about a young woman, I always, always, always, always wanted more Laura in that show. and I never got it. Okay. So how did you, how did you and the writers and the directors, how did you approach bringing Laura much more into the center of this show? Well, I mean, really from minute one before our first meetings with writers,

and that was always the goal. You know, these were Laura's books. These were her autobiographical books. They were told from her. perspective. We were adapting the books. We were not rebooting the TV series. And that was very much Tripp's intention, you know, in bringing the rights back out. It was to do it differently this time. And I think he's, I call him, pa, like that's our joke, you know. And he has a daughter named Rebecca, who he's very close with. And, you know, he very much intentionally chose women.

who were courageous and bold about how we were going to tell the story and who are, you know, nerdy and do lots of, do lots of research. And I think that like having the support of the rightsholder to really do this from Laura's perspective was the first step. And it just made the most sense because also staying in the perspective, of the child who is witnessing what's happening in the world allows you to come from this sort of place of innocence. She's not the one choosing to squat on Osage land, you know, and if you, and she just wants to know the Indians. She just wants to befriend the Osages and learn about their culture. She's innocent. And our children, are innocent, you know, our children don't choose the wars that they're born into or the, you know,

land battles or the financial problems that they're, that they're born into. And so actually telling the story from Laura's perspective gave us a lot of freedom as storytellers to, you know, to sort of let all the characters be human, rather than, you know, to sort of let all the characters be human, rather than some kind of representation of a political position. Exactly. And I do think, I really do think that, you know, by setting something from the perspective of a young girl, it's a lot easier. And this is why I think the books work in so many ways, despite being problematic and hard to read from a perspective these days, they're still a goddamn delight, okay? And I think it's because they're through the lens. I mean, it's an older woman writing as her younger self.

But when you're centering a young woman in the story, there is so much more curiosity. There's so much more joy and, I think, empathy as well. And I also think there was a lot of empathy on the part of Ma in the book as well. And yet it was hard for her to express it. think that Ma was also in reality fucking terrified all at the time because she's following her husband around on these ridiculous ventures of which he's never any good at. Okay, he's like he is not good at any of these things that he thinks he's going to make so much money on. She's got, she's got all of these babies. They're being carted all over the country. Their lives are being

completely like just like overturned, you know, at every juncture. And also, you know, she's She didn't have the knowledge of the Native Americans that we have now, and she was afraid for herself and her family. And so I think that comes across in the books, but then Mom also comes across as a bigot because of her fear. Yes. But I think, you know, being able to see Laura seeing her mother is just going to be so interesting to watch. Well, I think you'll be pleased at how we handled that because we did not hide. Caroline is very afraid. She's coming from, you know, having witnessed war in Wisconsin.

She, you know, racism comes from fear. You know, a lot of hatred comes from a place of fear. And so we try to give every character. We try to, we try to show a. truthful portrait of how someone might feel coming from where they're coming from in the story, whether it's having fought in the Civil War or, you know, living somewhere where there was any kind of battle. And then we try to see them grow and what do they learn from this new experience in the town of independence, you know. And so I'm excited for you to, to

to see our Caroline because she's still a woman who is completely in love and obsessed with her husband and will follow him to the ends of the earth. But she doesn't do it without questioning their decisions. And she has a lot of agency. And she is very smart. You know, Caroline was a teacher. And education is very important to her. You know, you can't be a dummy and raise Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was really, you know, she was progressive in a lot of ways in her own right. And I think that our Caroline is going to surprise and delight people. And she, you know, she's complicated. She's not just like a pretty blonde lady who follows her handsome husband around, you know.

Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Well, I bring that up a lot when we talk about tradwife culture and, you know, all of the false nostalgia surrounding the back to the land movement. And oh, don't you just, so you just want to be like Ma Ingalls. And number one, oh my God, I think Ma Ingalls would trade her life for our life in a freaking heartbeat. Okay. She didn't want to live in the dirt hole on the side of the creek. She didn't, okay? But number two, she, in real life, she, in real life, life also had to have so much agency and be so smart because she was managing that entire family. Yes. And so what the tradwife narrative leaves out with its idea of like submissiveness to your husband is that I don't think those women were submissive at all. Sure, they often had to follow their husbands, but they were also a helpmate. Okay? They were co-working together to manage a family during incredibly dangerous times.

And I do not think that, you know, many of the tradwife narratives, and including, you know, a recent book about trad wives, did enough research on what women's role actually was back then. I mean, these women were helping their husbands build these houses. These women were doing very hard labor. You know, you didn't have, there were, when they got to independence, there were only 100 people in that town. So how many people could help you build a house, you know?

I mean, the women were working. Like, they were working in the fields. They were working on the prairie. There was, you didn't have a choice. Everybody had to pitch in to survive. And as much as I would love to put Ma in, you know, high couture and have her bake chocolate, make chocolate chips from scratch with Nara, what's her face? But Nara Smith also, I mean, I say this all the time.

I'm like, let's be honest, the age of the trad wife is actually over now because Nara Smith and Hannah Nileman have both said they're the CEOs of their company. Like, it's, it's done. It's done. We reached peak tradwife. Obviously, it's like if anybody was believing that these girls weren't making millions of dollars and running a gigantic business making those cookies, they were crazy. I mean, they're geniuses.

Geniuses. Geniuses. They're hot geniuses. That's what they are. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Hit it right on the head. But yeah, I'm so excited because I think about Ma Engels a lot. I think about the entire family. They probably live rent free in my brain about as much as the characters of my own novels. Oh, that's so beautiful, Joe. I love that. I mean, so many women say that Lori Engels Wilder. made them writers, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I think it's also so interesting how, you know, Rebecca and I talk about this often that, like, she was a girl living on a farm in Northern California who was fishing and lived like Laura Ingalls. I was, you know, right outside New York City and Yonkers and like a working class Italian Irish kid who like barely saw a tree. And that's why I loved Laura Engels.

Do you know what I mean? Because it was so glamorous to me. It was so foreign to me to like be able to live in nature. Like you would go to Central Park or, you know, Tibbitts Park and Yonkers like to be in nature, you know. And and I think that like we all had this different obsession with Laura Angles and she spoke to us, you know, all for different reasons. but to me she was like the first feminist girl. She was like a girl with, you know, undiagnosed ADHD who got in trouble all the time for standing up for what's right. You know, that's who I was.

So I really loved her because I saw myself in this little girl from 1869 who wasn't afraid to say things that weren't popular, you know. And I think that Laura spoke to a lot of us, especially Gen X women, you know, because I think she was saying things that we weren't allowed to say yet. Yeah, absolutely. And so many of us across the political spectrum. And that is what Glynis and I realized when we hit the road for Wilder because we were driving through red states and blue states and blue parts of red states and red parts of blue states. And we talk to everyone. We talk. We talked to every socioeconomic level. We talked to every different race, ages, political affiliations. And people related to Laura for so many similar reasons, despite, you know, despite their differences today. And, you know, I think that's a beautiful thing to capture. And that's also why I think Laura can bring more people together in a beautiful way.

And that's what I'm really hoping for this show. I'm sick of the division. I'm so exhausted by it. And I'm sick of us not being able to have real conversations with someone who disagrees with us. And if a little house on the prairie can be the thing that I go talk to my neighbors with their big old Trump sign on their house about, cool. Because that show has to start happening. Or like we're just going to keep going in the wrong direction. No, I mean, that really is the dream, you know?

Like that really is why I chased these books and wanted to make a new version of this show. I mean, my husband, I'm from, I'm a New Yorker, but my husband is from North Dakota from a family of farmers. And his first job was corn detassling. And so to have my in-laws so proud that, you know, the New York Hollywood daughter-in-law is making a little last. to be in my own family, it feels unifying, you know, just that we have this thing in common, that we all love Laura Ingalls when we came from completely different worlds. And, I mean, that is the gift that she left behind with these books, you know? And I think it's up to all of us women who grew up and saw ourselves in her to sort of, you know,

straighten out the story a little bit too, right? And like help people understand all the facets of what these books and the Ingalls represent in American history and not just the original television series or not just the children's books. But, you know, Prairie Fire, Fires, Pioneer Girl, all the incredible research that Pamela Smith Hill and Caroline Fraser and you ladies, you and Glennie. have done around around Laura. Like she really is you know, truly a pioneer. But she was a pioneer for all of us. She truly was. Will you tell everyone where and how

they can watch this wonderful show? Our show, Little House on the Prairie, premieres on Netflix on July 9th. And we are so excited to share it with you. I can't wait. So, yeah, next week. next week. It comes out right before the Parisian heist. So, you know, I think they're an excellent hearing. I can't wait for the Parisian height. I know you're going to love it so, so much.

Oh, my gosh. Maybe I need to tap you and Laura to produce it together. Oh, my God. That would be so fun. It would be so fun. All right. Thank you so much for coming on today, Joy. This was an absolute, absolute delight. Oh, thank you, Joe. I'm really so like enamored with you. everything that you do. So I feel really grateful that you invited me. So thanks.