Actor Dean Butler has admitted that his 15-year-old co-star had “no sign” of womanhood when he kissed her as a teen.
In an interview with People, Gilbert recalled: “When I met Melissa in [the episode] Back to School, there was no sign of a woman there. She really was a little girl: bright, incredibly capable, spunky, vibrant, very extroverted. Now, I don’t know how much more of a woman there was there at the end, but she was being asked to go there at the end of that season.”
Butler continued on to praise Melissa’s acting and said: “I think she did it amazingly well when you look at how little life experience she had.” He then admitted that the pair were nervous during their kissing scene, which happened in the episode Sweet Sixteen.
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Dean confessed: “I think that there was anxiety on both sides of that kiss and ‘How is this going to go?’ But we stepped up to it. I’ve often said to Melissa: ‘I wish we could have been a little closer in age when we were doing this,’ but that’s not the way it really happened.”
He told People that Melissa’s character was “10 years younger” than his role as Almanzo and while filming, Butler said he thought “it would be great to have had more common ground” with his co-star so that they could “play the loving side” in a “more interesting way”.
Dean views their scenes as “beautiful and simple,” which he believes is “one of the reasons why people continue to love” the show. According to the actor, the show helps to portray “this idyllic view of what a romance could be” and “what young love could be”.
Butler thinks his character Almanzo was liked by the audience because they “loved Laura so much,” so the man she chose “must be really good”. Dean even quipped: “I got the benefit of a lot of all that. The audience just came right with me, because she did.”
He also revealed that fans still tell him that he was their first celebrity crush after his stint as Almanzo in nine seasons of the 70s western series. Butler noted that he is “one of those people for so many young women” and finds it “incredibly touching”.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
