‘Little House’ Star Crosby Fitzgerald on ‘American Primeval’ Inspiration, the Ingalls’ ‘Risky Move’ and Welcoming a Baby Cow in Season 2

“I just wanted to be in something like that, from that time period, and truly the next day I got an email about ‘Little House on the Prairie,'” Fitzgerald tells Variety.

The “Crime 101” actress, who says she has been primarily nannying for the past 10 years while continuously going on auditions, didn’t know if she could pull off the “measured proper lady” vibe of Ma at first. But after reading the script from creator Rebecca Sonnenshine, Fitzgerald realized “this wasn’t some tropey story about the 1800s,” and put everything she had into going out for the role.

“I think that Caroline Ingalls, the figure, she’s Ma, and a lot of people understand her as this one type of person,” Fitzgerald says. “And the approach they took in the script was very much, this is a marriage of equals.”

Based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” novels, Netflix’s “Little House on the Prairie” reboot follows Caroline, Charles Ingalls (Luke Bracey) and their two daughters, Laura (Alice Halsey) and Mary (Skywalker Hughes), as they set out from their home in the “Big Wood” in Wisconsin to make a new life in the Kansas frontier.

“It’s extremely risky — in our story, it’s a risk that Charles is very willing to take,” Fitzgerald says. “I think that in that time, it was something you would do with a lot of people, you would do with a lot of family. It would be really rare to go alone, especially with two young daughters. And so I think her fear reflects that. Why are we doing this alone? Why don’t we wait for our family? Ultimately, they have to, because of what happens at home. The way I look at it, there’s this part of them that needed a push to take this really risky move and there’s this very real drama with their extended family that makes them feel maybe it’s time for us to go our own way.”

Early on in the first season of Netflix’s “Little House on the Prairie,” the show features a now-pregnant Caroline questioning Charles’ choices and asserting her right to take the girls back to Wisconsin if he isn’t honest with her about their finances and the realities of life on the prairie.

“Charles married her because I think he respects her opinion — and I think that she married him because he respects her opinion,” Fitzgerald says. “Her goal throughout the whole show is to keep her children safe, and so she’ll do that at any cost. If that means telling your husband he’s being an idiot, that’s what it means. I think it wasn’t hard for her in those moments to say what she felt and to be like, I’ll do what it takes to keep my kids safe. She had a tumultuous life, and didn’t want that to happen for them. I think standing up to him actually wasn’t hard, because that’s not the dynamic that they have.”

By the Season 1 finale, the whole Ingalls family — including new baby, Grace — has just settled into their life in Independence, Kansas when a catastrophic fire destroys their crops and prompts another move. This time, they’re off to Plum Creek, which audiences might remember as the main setting for NBC’s iconic “Little House on the Prairie” series from the ’70s and ’80s. It’s where the Ingalls make a new home, and where Laura’s coming-of-age story truly begins.

At the time of this interview, Fitzgerald was on set filming “Little House” Season 2 with her on-screen family, and some new additions to the cast, including Willa Dunn as the iconic villain Nellie Oleson.

“I think people are gonna love Nellie Oleson in the same ways they loved her way back when,” Fitzgerald says. “And I think, similarly, this second season, which we’re shooting now, deals with the main things that we love about the book, ‘On the Banks of Plum Creek,’ are all there, plus these fun extra components to the story that I think people are going to didn’t really like.

“But listen, there is a cow,” Fitzgerald continues. “I get to hang out with a cow, a baby cow, every day. So that’s sort of what I’m laser focused on.”