Ted Shepherd/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Melissa Gilbertmade a recent appearance on theHey Dude... the 90s Called!podcast, which is nice as it shows that the hosts,Christine TaylorandDavid Lascher, hold no temporal prejudice against stars from the 1980s and '70s! The beloved actress spoke a bit aboutLittle House on the Prairie(naturally), and told an amusing tale about how she found out she landed the gig. "I was 9 when we shot the pilot, so I was probably around 8 and a half [when I auditioned]," Gilbert recalled. "They were going to do a remake ofMiracle on 34th Street, which I loved, and I auditioned for that and didn't get it. And I was really sad." NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Luckily, the budding young star had good people in her corner. "My dad said to me, 'Listen, just because you didn't get this, that's okay. It just means something better's going to come along.' I remember crying and saying, 'There'snothingbetter. What's better?'" she shared. "And two weeks later,Little House on the Prairie." The television adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's memoirs wasn't just some small production. Gilbert explained that the casting process was one of those "come one, come all" nationwide searches. "My mom was really smart about this stuff," she continued. "When I auditioned, there was no primping. She left me alone. I'd get the [script pages] and we'd read them just to make sure I knew them, but there was no coaching. The only thing she ever told me was to listen. That's all. To listen to whoever I was acting across from." NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Sign up forEntertainment Weekly's free daily newsletterto get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more. Gilbert noted that her mother dressed her in simple clothing — "overalls and a flannel shirt and tennis shoes, and whatever dirt was on my face" — with her hair in simple pigtails. "The first audition was a room full of girls with their moms primping, and making barrel curls on their fingers and straightening their pinafores" she explained. "And I came in all raggedy and dirty and messy. It worked." Gilbert said that she knew the part would be "the best adventure ever," but the way she learned she had it was a bit surprising. Michael Simon/Getty "I found out really unconventionally, because I was at school one day, in the lunch area, and this girl [from] an upper grade walked over to me," Gilbert recalled. "She said, 'Are you Melissa?' And I said, 'Yeah, I am.' And she said, 'I'm Leslie Landon, and my dad says you're going to be Half-Pint.'" Half-Pint was, of course, the nicknameMichael Landon's "Pa" used for his second daughter. "No cell phones, obviously, back then," Gilbert joked. "So, I run screaming to the office and tell them I have to call my mom immediately. My agents didn't know yet. My mom didn't know yet. Leslie got in so much trouble. We've been really close friends ever since that day." For more of Melissa Gilbert on the latest episode ofHey Dude... the 90s Called!, you can listen to the embed below. Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly