They showed their true pioneer spirit.
The crew behind the Netflix reboot of “Little House on the Prairie” recreated every aspect of that 19th-century world from scratch — including a pair of 96,000-pound log cabins.
It took over 200 members in the art department to painstakingly create the props, and 32 in the costume department to make the clothing.
“They’re hand-sewing every buttonhole. They’re hand-nailing in the nails on the bottom of every shoe,” said production designer Jonah Markowitz.
“Caroline rips a dress in the first episode in the wagon crossing, that might become an outfit that she makes on a doll later that Laura’s holding, by the end of the season that might be patched together as a dish towel.”
Markowitz, who spoke to The Post from the show’s set in Winnipeg while filming Season 2, said this production was unlike most period pieces set in the 1800s, because they filmed on a high-grassed prairie instead of a backlot.
“Usually when you do a Western or something of this genre at this scale, you go to a backlot and you sort of change some things or add some buildings … there is no backlot here,” he said.
For the reimagined “Little House” — which premiered on Netflix on July 9 — the most challenging part was designing the town of Independence, Kan., and building it “from the ground up,” Markowitz recalled.
“We started with a field full of snow that I came to on my first scout here . . . They said, ‘What do you think about putting the town here? And I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s under this snow.’”
The original TV series and the reboot are based on the beloved books Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her childhood in the 1800s, so when they built the two log cabins, one in a field and one on their soundstage, they followed the steps she described in her novels.
“She writes about how her father made the cabin and there were no nails, it was all notched logs, the doors had no hinges, it was wooden pegs, and we did that,” he said.
Another challenge was that the actual building of the cabin was featured in an episode.
“So then we had to have all these meetings about how are we going to do these stages of the cabins as we go through the episode,” Markowitz said.
“The assistant directors who are in charge of the schedule come in and they say, ‘We want to have the three logs down and then we’re going to go away for a couple minutes and then have six logs up,’ and you have to tell them, ‘We have to get a road in here with a crane to put those in.’”
Even though there are a lot of moving parts on set, Markowitz said there thankfully haven’t been any major mishaps.
“We have a lot of things that they always say are like the hardest things to work with — which are animals, kids, and water. And we do it all the time, all three of them,” he said.
The animals — horses, dogs and cats — bring a calming presence to the set.
“To go and get to walk over to a horse and have it nuzzle against you when you’re stressed out and working … I think it just adds a real levity and playfulness to the set that’s really beautiful,” he said.
In Season 2, the Ingalls relocate to Walnut Grove, Minn., so they had to build all new sets again.
“Everything was new for us, 100%. It was starting completely clean again,” he said.
“It’s actually kind of fun to come back … and build a whole new world, but for the characters you’ve already come to know.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
