Little House on the Prairie debuted on NBC just over 40 years ago in September 1974 — and the beloved series often feels as relevant as ever today.
The show is based on the series of books of the same name penned by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Following the adventures of the Ingalls family in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, the series ran for nine seasons.
In addition to its main cast, Little House also launched the careers of Jason Bateman, who played James Cooper Ingalls, and reality star Kyle Richards, who starred as Alicia Sanderson Edwards.
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Unfortunately, not all of the original cast is still with us. Michael Landon, who starred as Charles “Pa” Ingalls, died of pancreatic cancer on July 1, 1991, at the age of 54. Richard Bull, who played Nels Olsen for all nine seasons of the show, died in 2014 at the age of 89, and Kevin Hagen, who played Dr. Hiram “Doc” Baker, died of esophageal cancer in 2004.
The surviving cast of the series still hosts events around the United States in honor of the show and its cultural impact. Here’s where the cast of Little House on the Prairie is now:
Thirty years after they first chanted their way into pop culture history, Will Ferrelland Cheri Oteri’s Spartan Cheerleaders remain one of Saturday Night Live’s most iconic – and delightfully unhinged — sketches.
Ferrell, 58, and Oteri, 63, were five weeks into their SNL careers when they burst onto a November 11, 1995, episode dressed as the relentlessly upbeat Spartans. As outsiders who didn’t make the official high school squad, Craig (Ferrell) and Arianna (Oteri) still wore the uniform as they cheered proudly at chess matches, bake sales, even at a theater showing Titanic — wherever spirit was in short supply.
Written and performed by Oteri and Ferrell (with writer Paula Pell joining later), the nearly 20 sketches ran through 1999, giving Us timeless chants like “Who’s that Spartan in my teepee?” (“It’s me! It’s me!”) and characters we still dress up for on Halloween, even today.
Ready? OK! Keep scrolling for Oteri and Pell’s look back at the unforgettable legacy of the Spartan Cheerleaders:
Saturday Night Live’s hosts and musical guests are typically the center of attention each week — but sometimes more famous faces steal the show. Thank You! You have successfully subscribed. Subscribe to newsletters Please enter a valid email. Subscribe By signing up, I agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive emails from […]
Who Was Involved?
Oteri and Ferrell dreamed up the Spartans their first week on SNL while stomping on rehearsal floorboards. Oteri had been a high school cheerleader who admittedly had “no team spirit,” inspiring her to imagine kids who didn’t make the squad but “still cheered because it was in them, they were born to it.”
“I never cared about if we won or lost,” Oteri recalls exclusively to Us Weekly of her own lack of teenage pep. “It was just a way for me to perform and be loud and feel like I was good at something because I wasn’t a great athlete or student. I was across the board mediocre at everything. And [back then], you didn’t have to be a gymnast or a dancer, so I was like, ‘Oh, I can do these moves!’ You’re on stage in a way, you got a cute little uniform. And if our team would lose, I would just be like, ‘There’s still going to be a party, though, right?’”
Pell, however, instantly connected to the sketch for different reasons, telling Us that she “never” made her own high school squad despite auditioning every year.
“I was a person who tried out for cheerleading every single year. Every summer, I worked on my backhand spring every year,” she says. “But I was a little fat girl, so I never, ever, made cheerleading. Never once. I was the one that held the gum in the mints and the purses, and was up in the stands. Everyone in cheerleading were all my best friends, so I would sit, being like their mama up there, like a dance mom. I’d know every cheer. So when they asked me to [write for the Spartans], I just remember being like, ‘Oh, my God, you have no idea how [much] this is up my alley.’”
The Spartans were the ultimate lovable losers — sweet, sincere and bursting with misplaced confidence — putting a hilarious spin on the teenage experience.
“High school is all about drama and that’s what cracked me up,” Oteri explains. “It was like, ‘Oh my god, are you saying I split ends?!’ Everything was so dramatic and the problems are so big, you’re just gonna die if it doesn’t happen. I think everybody can relate to that.”
Key Details
NBC. Courtesy: Everett Collection
Every Spartans sketch had its signature elements: spirit fingers, Arianna clashing with her offscreen frenemy, Alexis, and the “perfect cheer.” Of course, Craig and Arianna’s sensibilities were a little… off, as with their tournament riff on “Proud Mary”: They sang “Bowling, bowling, bowling down the river” while he mock-choked her and then ended with a breathless plea to “Stop spousal abuse!”
Ferrell, Oteri and Pell were admittedly having a blast behind the scenes.
“We’d be in that little tiny office crying laughing,” Pell warmly recalls, confessing that sometimes, they’d stretch out the creating process to avoid moving on to a more stressful sketch. “You’re supposed to write a number of things that night, all of you. And we’d be in there laughing so hard and doing cheers … And then the other people that want to write with us, actors or writers, would, like, knock and say, ‘Are you almost done?’ And we’re like, ‘Oh my God, we’re getting there!’”
The hosts also loved to join in the fun, from Tom Hanks (as the angelic Spartan Spirit) and Jim Carrey (an exchange student cheerleader) to Pamela Anderson (in Baywatch mode) and Rosie O’Donnell (above). It was the type of sketch that came with a sense of security once it became a recurring series.
“We really wanted to milk the joy, because we just knew that if we had to go into the writing the unknown. It was always more nerve wracking,” Pell says. “And [Spartans] was just pure joy.”
The Aftermath
The Spartan Cheerleaders didn’t just land laughs — they became a phenomenon, boosting SNL after a handful of lackluster seasons.
Pell remembers things feeling fairly “maligned” when she, Oteri and Ferrell first joined the cast and writer’s room. “When I got hired, Kat Pettibone Lorne [Michaels] was saying, ‘The show has had to be a Phoenix many times, where it falls and then it comes back up. And this is one of those eras. That’s why we’ve gotten rid of so many people, and now we’re starting fresh.”
Adds Oteri, “Everybody was so excited, nervous, grateful. We were like kids. We were all like excited kids, and to get us to go anywhere all they had to do was feed us food. Because we were all just coming off, not being poor, but struggling.”
Pell admits that while the newbies initially had “no idea what we were doing,” they leaned into the character writing and pulling inspiration from their own lives – something that quickly paid off.
When Oteri and Ferrell made the cover of Rolling Stone in 1997 alongside Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher and Chris Kattan as one of The Night at the Roxbury’s Butabi brothers, it was clear that their infectious spirit had spread beyond Studio 8H.
“It was just like, ‘Wow, SNL is back. We’re bringing it back!’” Pell exclaims.
Oteri, meanwhile, realized the success much later: “I remember going to a kids’ swim party. They were doing the whole ‘Taco, burrito, what’s coming out of your Speedo?’ cheer!” she says.
There was also an out-of-body experience at a Bed Bath & Beyond.
“I was in L.A. and I’m waiting in line, and they have those little round displays with magnets. And I look over and there was a magnet of me and Will as the cheerleaders! I wanted so bad to tell the people in line, like, ‘Listen to me: That’s me! That’s me!’”
The legacy of the Spartans continues on today. As recently as 2022, SNL host Miles Teller shared a childhood video of himself and his sister playing Spartan Cheerleaders.
“All those Halloweens that people dressed up as us,” Oteri comments, “it really is the sweetest tribute I could ever imagine.”
A New Perspective
NBC/courtesy Everett Collection
The trio got “a lot back” from their labors, Oteri says. “I’ve always loved playing people who don’t know how bad they have it.”
While Oteri officially departed SNL in 2000, the comedian says she would have “loved to stay longer” and continue to create characters.
“That was my dream job, and I always felt like it was the perfect fit for me and I had more to give,” she tells Us. She adds that looking back, she wishes she had known she wouldn’t be returning for another season so she could have had a proper farewell.
“It’s very important to say goodbye and but I was so shocked that I had made that decision [to exit the show], and I really wish I would have said a goodbye,” she tells Us. “Because there’s a difference between leaving and running away. And I think saying goodbye is leaving. That’s my regret.”
As for why she left, Oteri says it’s a “hard” thing to answer, “It can be a rough place. That’s no secret. And I felt like I had to take care of myself. I just felt like I had to do it,” she adds.
Saturday Night Live has catapulted the careers of many of today’s most popular comedians, including Will Ferrell, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey and Adam Sandler. Murphy, for his part, appeared as a cast member from 1980 to 1984. He went on to become a lucrative movie star, but tension between him and the show arose after […]
Pell remained a writer on SNL until 2013. And while she, Oteri and Ferrell were all present at the show’s 50th Anniversary special earlier this year, a Spartan cheer was nowhere to be seen — or heard. Pell says it was a “hard” decision figuring out what past sketches would be honored as who was attending remained up in the air until the very end.
“I was involved in [SNL 50], because I wrote stuff, but I wasn’t really in the meetings of them discussing [what to do],” she says. “They didn’t know [who was coming] for a while, so it was all unsure. … It would have been fun if we did it.”
Where Are They Now?
Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images
Since their SNL days, Ferrell has become one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy stars, appearing in hit blockbusters like Anchorman, Elf and January’s You’re Cordially Invited. Oteri popped up on And Just Like That and has Scary Movie 6 and a guest spot on season 2 of NBC’s Happy’s Place upcoming. Pell created and starred in Girls5eva and The Mapleworth Murders, and is set for a 2026 remake of The Burbs with Keke Palmer. “I play a military lesbian that helps solve the murders [in town],” she teases. Consider Us tuned in!
If you’re from a certain era, you’ll remember where you were when it emerged that Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson had split. The fact that Seth and Summer, aka the best couple in The OC (sorry-not-sorry, Marissa and Ryan), were dating in real-life as well was a total joy to fans of the show — until they were no more.
With Brody winning hearts once more opposite Kristen Bellas the cute rabbi in Netflix hit Nobody Wants This, all those emotions have come flooding back — complete with some whimsical West Coast indie playing in our minds, naturally. So let’s look back at what Brody, now 44, and Bilson, 43, once were.
How it Began
They say you should never date your co-stars, but did these two listen? Not a chance.
Brody and Bilson had actually met before the show, when he was casually dating an unidentified friend of hers — but she’s since admitted that she thought he was “kind of a d–k”, although “cute and funny”.
But once they had started working together in 2003 (when Bilson was 22 and Brody was 23), sharing an undeniable chemistry as unlikely on-screen couple Seth and Summer, things quickly progressed, with Bilson revealing that she started questioning her feelings for her co-star when they shot their first on-screen kiss, just six episodes into season 1 of the show. “I remember after shooting the scene where I kiss him, like, I remember thinking, ‘Do I like Adam?’” she said on the Welcome to The OC, Bitches! podcast in 2021. “And I remember thinking after work, because I feel like it was the last scene I shot that day, being, like, “Wait, do I like Adam? That’s when those wheels started turning.”
Soon, the pair were an established couple, moving in together and getting a pet pitbull terrier together, which they named Penny Lane. Cute.
How Long it Lasted
Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson in 2003Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
These two sadly didn’t quite make it to the end of The OC, breaking up in 2006. In fact, by the time we saw Seth and Summer getting married on TV in season four, the pair had already split, after around three years of dating — and four seasons of the show.
Sounds awkward? It was!
“We broke up at the very end so there wasn’t much [for us to film] after the breakup,” she revealed on the Armchair Expert podcast in 2021. “We did get married after we broke up. That’s always fun! They totally did that on purpose. That was the only scene left to shoot, was the wedding. They’re like, ‘You broke up? Let’s give you a wedding.’”
How it Ended
The pair have never spoken about the exact reasons for the split, other than Bilson insisting “We still got along really well”, but at the time Brody had become disillusioned with working on the show even before the split.
The actor has since admitted that he didn’t behave very enthusiastically on set, which must have been tricky for the ever-perky Bilson. “I started to be creatively less interested,” Brody admits in the official tell-all book, Welcome To The OC: An Oral History. “I blame myself for a lack of professionalism, and a disrespect to the work.”
Creator Josh Schwartz says that Brody was so “lethargic” on set as they shot the later seasons of the show that they had to write his personality change into the plot. “Brody just changed his delivery, his investment in it,” said Schwartz. “His style shifted to such a degree that we felt like we needed to account for it creatively. That’s where ‘Kaitlin gets Seth hooked on pot’ took root. We were like, ‘Well, how do we explain his lethargy on-screen? And at least if we can write that he’s stoned, then we’re not trying to write around it.’”
Bilson admits it was tough being a supportive girlfriend at the time. “How do you balance that?” she said in the book. “Because you want to be supportive of the person you’re with. But also I’m a firm believer in always being grateful, and gratitude comes first. And I think there were probably times where that went by the wayside. You grow up, you look back, and you can realize when you’re young, you might behave in certain ways you wish you hadn’t.”
Samaire Armstrong, Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson in 2003Gregg DeGuire/WireImage for VH-1 Channel
There was another little bump in the road for the couple when, on the show, Seth was involved in a love triangle with Anna, played by Samaire Armstong, and Bilson felt that the actress got a little too cozy with her man. “When Seth is in the bedroom with Anna and she goes to kiss him, I see Samaire, like, slip tongue!” she said in 2021, after rewatching the scenes. “I’m watching it and she slipped the tongue and I get transported back to 18 years ago and I get a little jealous! And I’m like, ‘What are you doing slipping tongue in his mouth?’ It was like the real-life triangle playing out as I’m watching it. I saw the tongue and I was like, ‘There’s no tongue in television!’. I feel like it definitely played out a little bit in real life for a minute. Not really, really, but I remember the tension with Samaire and I, a little bit.”
And if she’s still talking about it two decades later, it must have really stung.
What They Said About Each Other
Much like her famous character, Bilson has always loved to talk! When the pair were dating, she told Teen People how happy she was. “We always have a lot to talk about and we tell each other everything,” she said. “I feel like I have everything now — the dog, the house, the job, and him. I can’t ask for anything more.”
What They Say Now
Rachel Bilson and Adam Brody in 2006Rabbani and Solimene Photography/WireImage
Bilson still loves to talk! Over the years, the actress has spoken in magazine interviews and on various nostalgic podcasts about their relationship, and it sounds like she mostly has happy memories. “Because of what the show was and how young we all were, going through it with someone experiencing the same thing and having that kind of support was really awesome,” she told Nylon in 2021. “I’m actually grateful that I did have it.”
Brody, too, looks back at the time fondly. “It was my pleasure and it was such a joy,” he told Bilson when they chatted together on the Welcome To The OC, Bitches! podcast in 2021. “In the pilot, you made it your own instantly and everyone fell in love with you. I felt like we were sparring so well together so fast.”
In the same year, Bilson spoke about the relationship on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast (yes, the guy who’s married to Kristen Bell, who Brody appears opposite in Nobody Wants This. Hollywood is a small world!). “I had so much, and still do, love and respect for Adam,” she said. “We went through so much together, being so young and everything with the show. And I’m so happy for him with his family and his beautiful wife and kids and everything.”
Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson in 2003Lee Celano/WireImage
She added that she credits the relationship with preventing her from getting sucked into the wild celebrity party scene — in what appears to be a reference to her co-star Mischa Barton. “I wasn’t at the clubs, falling out of the cars panty-less,” she said. “It was a little different for me. I was in a relationship during the show, which I think helped keep me at home, playing board games and watching really great TV like Jeopardy! We did go out, but it was just a different thing. There was stability and I did grow up kind of fast, did all the stuff a little early.”
Bilson also credits Brody with improving her acting skills. “You taught me how to act well,” she said on Welcome To The OC, Bitches! “You made it so, like, comfortable to just go for it and not be afraid. Everything you did in working with you really made me have the confidence to kinda, like, do whatever I wanted and go for it. I just wanna say thank you.”
More cheekily, Brody also revealed in a Reddit Ask Me Anything chat in 2014 that his ex was an amazing kisser. “One of the all time greats!” he said. With his top notch kissing skills getting a lot of attention in Nobody Wants This, it sounds like he might owe Bilson a thank you too.
The O.C. was once a pop culture phenomenon — and Rachel Bilson experienced the pandemonium firsthand during an appearance on TRL. In Alan Sepinwall’s new book, Welcome to the O.C.: The Oral History, Bilson, 42, recalled being “swarmed by a mass mob” of fans who wanted to meet her costar and then-boyfriend, Adam Brody, after […]
Key Relationship Takeaways
Their characters Seth and Summer tied the knot in the final episodes of The OC, and it wasn’t too long before Brody and Bilson started settling down too — sadly for fans, it just wasn’t with each other. Brody started dating Gossip Girl star Leighton Meesterin 2013 (Seth Cohen and Blair Waldorf isn’t a twist anyone saw coming!), and the pair have now been married for a decade and have two young children.
Blair Waldorf and Seth Cohen forever! Leighton Meester and Adam Brody are the real-life crossover couple that television has blessed Us with. The Gossip Girl alum and the former O.C. star started dating in 2013. Although they generally keep their romance under wraps, the pair have shared sweet sentiments about each other over the years. “I […]
Bilson, meanwhile, has a 9 year old daughter, Briar, with actor Hayden Christensen, who she dated for 10 years. The pair split in 2017, but now happily co-parent. Bilson’s next high-profile relationship was with actor and comedian Bill Hader, in 2020, but it was short-lived: the pair were together for around six months, but struggled to keep it going during the pandemic. She later joked that she missed his “big d–k”!
On the Call Me Daddy podcast in 2022, the actress said that she’s noticed something that some of her exes have in common. “This is a generalization,” she said. “I think I’ve dated quite a few actors, and I do think that some of them, not all, have very self-involved tendencies.” She later emphasized that she didn’t mean Christensen.
Whatever went down between Brody and Bilson when they split, we’re so glad that their ultimately ill-fated relationship hasn’t tarnished the brilliance of Seth and Summer. These two were clearly hugely important to each other at a pivotal point in their lives, and are able to look back on the time with happy memories. After all, you just know that if Bilson had any bad feeling toward Brody, she’d probably be pretty open about it!
Andew, Matthew and Joey LawrenceThat’s4Entertainment/Kristin Locurto
It’s been nearly 30 years since Joey, Matthew and Andy Lawrence costarred in Brotherly Love — and they still enjoy sharing the screen.
“We’ve talked about [a spinoff], but believe it or not, we came up with this [new] iteration that we feel was really exciting,” Joey, 48, exclusively told Us Weekly at ‘90s Con on Friday, September 13. “It’s called The Lawrence of Brothers Show, and our crew’s here today.”
He continued, “We’re doing it and we have an amazing team, and it’ll be out next year and we’re really excited about it.”
According to Joey, The Lawrence of Brothers Show “won’t be expected.”
The three Lawrence brothers — Joey, Matthew and Andrew — are no strangers to showcasing their sibling connection in real life or on the big screen. The trio played onscreen siblings in NBC’s short-lived sitcom Brotherly Love from 1995 to 1997. (The second and final season aired via The WB.) The comedy followed eldest brother Joe Roman (Joey […]
“It’s fun, funny and very irreverent. We’re excited about that,” Joey told Us.
Joey, who got his big break on Mayim Bialik’s Blossom, went on to act with his younger siblings on 1995’s short-lived Brotherly Love sitcom. On the show, Joey played Joe Roman, who returns home to Philadelphia after his father’s death. He quickly learns that his younger half-brothers Matt and Andy need help running the family’s garage.
“It was just such a dream. It was really cool,” Joey gushed.
While the three brothers struggled to choose — and, to quote Joey, “remember” — favorite story lines, they, moreso, cited behind-the-scenes adventures as the most memorable.
“I took Andy out one night [dressed as] Batman and Robin,” Joey recalled. “They let us have the Bat Car!”
Andy, 36, noted that production let Joey borrow the famous vehicle for “a week or two.”
“It was incredible. I would actually, like, go out and sit in the Bat Car and I’m a huge Batman fan,” Joey gushed, also pointing out a special moment on set with Matthew, 44. “So there was a series of episodes where I had to train Matt’s character how to work out, and he wouldn’t work out [with] me in real life yet. It was really fun too [and] I actually got to put him through the workouts.”
The Lawrence brothers — Joey, Matthew and Andrew, respectively — have been entertainment staples since their days headlining the likes of Blossom and Brotherly Love. As the siblings grew up in the spotlight, their respective love lives also made numerous headlines through the years. “Look, it’s all about just trying to be happy,” Joey exclusively […]
Joey continued, “Then, he ended up, because of those [episodes], he actually started to work out.”
Of course, the Lawrences didn’t stop working together between Brotherly Love and their new production. They also costarred in the Disney Channel Original MoviesHorse Sense and Jumping Ship, as well as several Lifetime movies. Matthew and Andy also made brief cameos on Joey’s Melissa and Joey comedy with Melissa Joan Hart.
“I saw Mel this morning [at ‘90s Con],” Joey quipped. “I mean, people have asked us to do [a spinoff]. I know stranger things have happened.”
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The brothers, who also cohost a joint “Brotherly Love” rewatch podcast, further thanked fans for their continued support through the years.
“That’s the best part [of being here] — to see the passion out there and you feel how much the time, the moment [and] the projects meant to them growing up,” Joey said. “It’s really such a blessing and I’m so grateful to have that relationship and the communication with a fanbase out there.”
