Little House on the Prairie star responds to Jason Bateman’s claim he was hazed on the show

Actor Jason Bateman’s “hazing ritual” admission sparked an animated response from one of his co-stars.

Bateman appeared on the popular show “Hot Ones,” where the host and guests eat increasingly spicy wings while discussing the guest’s career, social media posts and other topics of interest. At one point in the show, host Sean Evans asked about the star’s time on ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ where Bateman played James Cooper Ingalls.

Watch the full episode: (Relevant portion begins at 8:25)

“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?” Evans asked.

“Untrue. 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 they call it on my chest,” Bateman responded.

“There was a hazing ritual on ‘Little House on the Prairie’?” the host asked.

“Yeah. They knocked on my chest like I was a front door. I went to the makeup artist and said, ‘Put a big black-and-blue mark all over my chest.’ And then I went to their parents and I said, ‘Look what your kids did to me.’ And that was good. I got them in trouble,” the actor elaborated.

This admission sparked an Instagram response from Melissa Gilbert, Bateman’s co-star, who played Laura Ingalls Wilder.

“Who? Who did this to you?!?! I will kick their tush….no one smacks down my little bro!” she wrote, adding the hashtag “iwillcutab**ch.”

A ‘Little House on the Prairie’ reboot is currently in the works at Netflix with Alice Halsey playing the starring role of Laura.

Bateman has previously reminisced about his time on the show’s set during a 2017 interview with Variety.

“That group of actors has been together since ‘Bonanza,’ and the way in which everybody functioned was very familial. It was a warm place, and I remember in the few years that followed, when I would end up on sets that were less functional. Michael Landon was somebody who had a huge influence on me in the way he led that set as a director, as an exec producer, as a writer and actor and as somewhat of a father figure for me. He was the George Clooney of that time: The crew loved him, the industry loved him, guys wanted to be him and women wanted to be with him,” he said at the time.

Writer/Columnist

Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to BizPac Review.

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