‘The Waltons’ Star Mary Beth McDonough On How She Landed the Role of Erin Walton

Mary Beth McDonough charmed TV audiences as Erin Walton on CBS’s hit series The Waltons. She played the character on all nine seasons of the family-friendly drama, as well as in several made-for-TV movies. But there may have been an element of chance in her getting cast in the role of a lifetime. 

‘The Waltons’ cast member reminded the show’s creator of his sister 

Earlier in 2023, McDonough appeared on The Ross Owen Show (via YouTube) to chat about her time on The Waltons and how she landed her part on the show. 

“I had an agent who never sent me out on any auditions until The Homecoming,” she recalled, speaking of the 1971 TV movie that led to the series. “And the only reason is the hair.” 

“They were looking for red-headed kids,” she added. “So everybody who had red hair got seen.”

But her flaming locks alone were not what got McDonough cast. 

“There were lots of auditions,” she explained. “I went in six times, I think. They kept narrowing down the different kids … the last time we went in, it was all of us and we read with Richard Thomas,” who had been cast as John-Boy Walton.  

“They narrowed it down and they came up with us. And apparently, I reminded [The Waltons creator and writer] Earl Hamner of the real Erin, his sister Audrey,” she added. 

“It was just pure luck,” McDonough said. “My dad always said it was like buying your first ticket to the Irish sweepstakes and winning.” 

Earl Hamner Jr. based ‘The Waltons’ on his childhood 

The Homecoming was based on Hamner’s 1961 book Spencer’s Mountain, which was in turn inspired by his own childhood growing up in rural Virginia during the Great Depression. He used himself as the model for John-Boy and based several other characters on various family members. But the show also took plenty of dramatic license for the sake of TV. 

“He wrote about his own life and many things that were accurate about his childhood growing up in rural Virginia. But much of what was told during the series was then fictionalized,” McDonough’s co-star Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen Walton, explained in a video shared on her YouTube channel. 

“It was a real joy to help bring his childhood to life,” Norton added. 

Hamner himself couldn’t have been happier with the young actors who ended up playing his fictionalized siblings in The Homecoming and The Waltons. 

“Every actor was perfect for their role … The children were especially good,” Hamner said in an interview with the Television Academy prior to his death in 2016. “A casting agent named Pat Paulifrone cast all the children. We only looked at them once and said ‘Yes, wonderful.’”

‘The Waltons’ cast was a family off-screen as well 

The Waltons cast – who are still close today – ended up forming a family off-screen as well as on-screen, Hamner recalled. 

“They thought of themselves as brothers and sisters, and I’ll never forget Ellen Corby, the grandmother, who off-camera was grandma, as well,” he said in an interview with INSP. “I remember her very well shouting to one of the children, ‘Stop that running on the set! You’re gonna fall over a cable and kill yourself!’”

McDonough confirmed that she treasured her relationship with the rest of The Waltons cast.  

“I was given this incredible gift of a second family … it’s such an amazing gift,” she said. 

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