The Original Nellie From Little House On The Prairie Is All Grown Up (And Loves Her Netflix Cameo)

Alison Arngrim was just 12 years old when she began playing infamous mean girl Nellie Oleson in the original "Little House on the Prairie." More than 50 years later, little Nellie is now in her 60s. Today, the "Little House on the Prairie" cast member looks (and feels) as great as ever. She even returned to the prairie for Netflix "Little House" reboot, though she looks unrecognizable in her cameo both to those who knew her from her days as Nellie and those who know her today — and she's loving it.

The grown-up Arngrim is still a blonde like Nellie, but she left the ringlets and giant bows behind. Instead, she has been rocking a stylish pixie cut that suits her perfectly, as seen in the picture below (right) from a Monaco event that saw her reunite with the surviving cast members from "Little House on the Prairie" in 2024. But her good looks weren't on display during her cameo for the 2026 reboot. "I play this very strange woman in the woods," she told Fox News of the role that required her to look as disheveled and dirty as possible.

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That was a first for Arngrim. "I used to have Marilyn Monroe's makeup guy every morning, who made sure we looked really nice," she added. "But when I first sat down in the makeup chair this time around, the makeup artist said, 'We're going to make you look so awful. I feel bad. You have such amazing skin. I'm going to totally ruin that." As different an experience as it was, Arngrim fully embraced it.

Most actors prefer to put the best version of themselves on TV, but Alison Arngrim enjoyed finding herself on the opposite end of the experience. She even shared unflattering selfies and stills from the show on social media, making it a point to show the bad teeth she donned "Bwahaha! I had SOOOOO much fun doing this! So happy people are enjoying my cameo on the new 'Little House!'" Arngrim captioned the July 2026 Instagram post. 

OG fans of the NBC series joined in the fun in the comments section. "They did always talk about how all that candy would rot your teeth, Nellie!" one netizen wrote. Another borrowed from Nellie's infamous arrogance to pay homage to the early days of Arngrim's iconic character. "'My Cameo: MY cameo is the best cameo in all of Walnut Grove,'" the fan commented. Perhaps Arngrim found it easy to look her worst on TV because she had years of experience playing a character everyone loved to hate.

It wasn't always an easy experience, but it taught her valuable lessons. "By making me a b***h, you have given me my freedom, the freedom to say and do things I couldn't do if I was 'a nice girl,'" she wrote in her 2010 memoir, "Confessions of a Prairie B***h" (via Today). She hopes that Willa Dunn, who will play Nellie Oleson in Season 2, will learn to separate the hate toward her character from who she is. "It's a weird thing, but you have to understand the character has nothing to do with you," she said in the Fox News interview.