Alison Arngrim Says “Little House on the Prairie” Set Was 'So Hot' Even Sean Penn Passed Out During His Guest Appearance
- - Alison Arngrim Says “Little House on the Prairie” Set Was 'So Hot' Even Sean Penn Passed Out During His Guest Appearance
Sara BelcherDecember 25, 2025 at 10:27 AM
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Sean Penn in 'Little House on the Prairie' (left); Penn in 2025 -
Alison Arngrim said the set of Little House on the Prairie was so hot she would often pass out while filming
There were buckets of ice water and salt tablets on set to help keep actors cool
Arngrim wasn't the only one who suffered from the heat — even Sean Penn passed out while making an appearance on the show
Sean Penn may have only made a brief appearance on Little House on the Prairie, but he made an impression on costar Alison Arngrim.
On an episode of The Patrick LabyorSheaux podcast, Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on the hit show, recalled how filming for Little House took place in Simi Valley, Southern California, where it was always hot.
"It was the hottest location in the entire world. [It] was so hot," podcast host and former Little House star Patrick Labyorteaux recalled. "It was so hot that they would have these buckets of ice water and sea breeze so that you could dip some sort of cloth in and put around your neck."
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Sean Penn on Little House on the Prairie episode: "The Voice of Tinker Jones"
"You know how people say the first day of spring [is] when you see a robin? First day of summer is when Alison hits the ground because I was out like that," Arngrim recounted on the podcast. "It was that hot."
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Penn made a guest appearance on season 1, episode 11 of Little House, playing an extra in the episode "The Voice of Tinker Jones," directed by his father, Leo Penn. In the episode, the kids work with a traveling tinker to craft a new church bell. Filming the episode required the child actors to all crowd around a hot forge for a couple of scenes — during which Arngrim said Penn passed out.
"All of a sudden, I heard a noise and turned around and he went [down], and he didn't wake up and come back to work," she recalled. "That was it. He was done for the day."
Though the heat made the future Mystic River star sit out for the rest of filming, Arngrim said the moment proved to the show's producers that she wasn't the only one suffering from the heat on set.
"That's when they decided maybe it's not just me, that it was actually that hot," she said.
Since the show ended in 1983, Arngrim has talked at length about how her character in particular was hated by viewers.
"I didn't have people going, 'Oh, I have such a crush on you. I love you.' It was, 'I hate you. I hate you so much,' " she revealed during the Little House on the Prairie Final 50th Anniversary Reunion. She even recalled a moment when "someone threw an orange soda at my face" while she was walking in a Christmas parade.
Despite dealing with backlash over Nellie's bullying behavior for years, Arngrim has admitted she still feels connected to the Little House character.
"She's like a body part. I often say she's like my sister. She's like my evil twin sister," Arngrim said. "She's like another arm or a leg or an appendage. She's not going anywhere. She's just there."
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
