‘When Calls the Heart’ Just Cemented Its ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Connection With This Surprise Casting
A familiar face from Walnut Grove is coming to Hope Valley. Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, will guest star in the upcoming season of When Calls the Heart.
Melissa Gilbert to guest star in ‘When Calls the Heart’ Season 12
Gilbert will appear in two episodes of When Calls the Heart Season 12, which will air in 2025 on Hallmark Channel. She will play Georgie McGill, who has a surprising past with a special resident of Hope Valley, according to Deadline. The announcement took place at the Hearties Family Reunion, a fan event in Vancouver, Canada.
Gilbert’s casting came about thanks to her role on Little House on the Prairie, which ran for nine seasons from 1974 to 1983 on NBC. That show starred Michael Landon as her character’s father, Charles “Pa” Ingalls. Landon’s son, Michael Landon Jr., is a co-creator of When Calls the Heart, which premiered in 2014. He and Gilber reconnected at the Little House on the Prairie 50th Anniversary Cast Reunion and Festival earlier this year, which is where they came up with the idea for her cameo.
Michael Landon Jr. ‘can’t stop thinking’ about what Gilbert’s casting would mean to his father
In a Sept. 15 post on X, Landon said he “was honored and thrilled to announce my dear friend Melissa Gilbert is on the series!”
“I can’t stop thinking about what this would mean to my dad,” he added.
“When Calls the Heart has long drawn comparisons to Little House on the Prairie, for its charming and compelling stories of hope, human connection, and frontier survival,” said Kelly Garrett, Hallmark Media’s vice president of programming, said in the network’s announcement of Gilbert’s casting.
“It was only fitting that the first people to hear this special news were the Hearties — devoted fans who have celebrated the show year after year and made it such a success,” she added. “The energy being here with them to share this news is electric and we cannot wait for them to meet Georgie next year.”
‘Little House on the Prairie’ inspired ‘When Calls the Heart’
The link between Little House on the Prairie and When Calls the Heart is stronger than just a connection to the Landon family. Landon Jr. has said that he was directly influenced by his father’s show – which followed a family living on America’s frontier – when creating the Hallmark series.
“I grew up on Little House on the Prairie, my favorite of my father’s work, and it has a very special place in my heart,” he told The Globe and Mail in 2014.
Landon went on to say that he felt there was still an appetite for family-friendly shows Little House, even if they were no longer in vogue in Hollywood. A desire to fill that void inspired himto create When Calls the Heart, which is based on a series of novels by Janette Oke.
“This kind of family entertainment is non-existent so I feel like we’re tapping into a large audience that’s yearning for this type of programming,” he said. “That was one of the special things for me growing up and I think that’s why I loved Little House. It wasn’t just the series itself. It was the idea that as a family we were all going to sit together and we were going to have some laughs and shed some tears and be uplifted at the end of the day, and not brought down.”
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