‘Little House on the Prairie’s’ Luke Bracey on Pa’s Trusting Nature

[This story contains some spoilers for the first season of Netflix‘s Little House on the Prairie.]

Luke Bracey didn’t know anything about Little House on the Prairie growing up — Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and the long-running TV series of the 1970s and ’80s didn’t register with him as a kid in Australia.

“Maybe the title was familiar,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “When I got the audition, I really had no concept of what it is, so it was all a fresh, new experience for me coming into it. In a way, that might have been a little bit helpful — I didn’t have anything already in mind of what it was or what it should be.”

Bracey of course landed the role of Charles Ingalls in Netflix’s adaptation of Little House, based on Laura Ingalls Widler’s semi-autobiographical novels of her childhood. In the first season, Charles moves his family — wife Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) and daughters Mary (Skywalker Hughes) and Laura (Alice Halsey) — from the woods of Wisconsin to Independence, Kansas, on the promise of abundant (and cheap) land and a fresh start after a family rift.

Of course, things don’t go as smoothly as Charles had believed they would, and by the end of the season (as at the end of the book), the Ingalls family is packing up to move again. After the hoped-for intervention of the U.S. government in a land deal with the native Osage people goes for naught — with Charles discovering he was sold a false promise — and a fire wipes out the family’s fledgling crops, Pa leads the family toward another home.

Bracey talked with THR about Charles’ optimism, the problems that arise from it, working with the show’s young stars and looking ahead to Little House’s second season.

Once you were cast as Charles, did you read the books or delve into the real Ingalls family’s life while you were preparing?

I did a few things with the books. I wanted to get the idea and the feeling of the books. One thing our showrunner, Rebecca Sonnenshine, said was that she wanted [viewers] to feel what you felt when you read the books as a kid. I didn’t want to do too much because the books are from the perspective of a young girl, and Pa can be kind of perfect in it. We didn’t want him to be perfect. We wanted him to be a human and make some mistakes. But he also is a good man. I think those two things live together in Pa. He certainly makes mistakes, but he is a good man at heart, and he tries to learn from them. There was a bit of trying to play that balance of creating something new and something real without it deviating too much from the spirit of the books.

I would say that it comes through pretty clearly that he means well in all respects, but there’s also a feeling that maybe he’s a little — I don’t know if “naive” is the right word, but maybe overly optimistic in terms of how he thinks this new life will play out. What was your read on him in that regard?

I think those are two words that I would use. I mean, he’s not just a glass half-full guy. He’s a cup overfloweth guy. His first thought of everything is, “What if it’s great? It could be great.” And there’s some naiveté to that. We see that when he gets there and he has the first interaction he has is with Dr. Tann [Jocko Sims]. And Dr. Tann says to him, this is no joke. You need other people. This is a myth if you think you’re just going to do this by yourself. That’s his first interaction with reality of the situation.

I think he has the best of intentions. But his naiveté is something that he has to learn to corral a little bit. His real optimism is a great part about him and something that I think is really beautiful in a man. But he has to learn that not everything’s going to be rosy. One thing I like about him is every time he gets knocked down, he keeps getting back up, and he still doesn’t lose his desire to be a good man or his knowledge of who he is and how he wants to tackle the world. So he is naive, but he certainly doesn’t let it change who he is. Maybe he’s got to be a little bit more careful with who he trusts, but his character stays really strong. I think that’s a wonderful mark of Charles.

Was that a big part of the appeal to you in taking on this role?

There aren’t very many things [on TV] these days where it is a man trying to be a good man, a good father and a good husband and a good member of his community. Something that appealed to me about the whole show is that it’s a really high-quality production about nice people. That’s kind of rare. I feel privileged to have been able to be part of something that tells a nice story about people trying to be good. They’re not perfect people. They make mistakes, but in their heart, they’re decent, decent folk. That’s what appeals to me.

The season ends with the family having to leave Independence, which anyone who has read the books will know. Some of why is outside of their control, but it also turns out they were given false promises. Going into next season, how does Charles keep his optimistic outlook in the face of all that?

One of the marks of Charles is his ability to keep getting up when the world knocks him down. He just keeps getting up and going forward, and he’s never going to lose that. What we’ll find in the new season is he’s a little bit more switched on to people that he meets. He’s not as — maybe gullible is the wrong word, but not as easily awed by people. In the first season, you’ve got Eli James [Michael Hough] and he’s selling the dream. Charles just wants the dream to be true so badly that he believes it.

In season two, we find him trying to take the measure of people a little bit more. He absolutely always thinks the best of people, but he’s not going to be as easily manipulated. He’s a little bit more streetwise after experience of season one and their journey from Kansas to Walnut Grove. He came from a place where it was his family [all around him]. There was no need to have your guard up. Then he got put out into the big, wide world and he’s realized that, wow, not everyone has the best of intentions. But he does believe that deep down inside of everyone there is goodness and there is truth and there is honesty. But he’s maybe not going to fall so quickly into believing everything.

What more can you say about what people will see in the second season?

We’ve got a pretty classic character in Nellie Olesen [to be played by Willa Dunn] coming into the second season. And then, it’s nice to see the Ingalls living. There’s a certain domesticity to their life in the second season. They’re a bit closer to a bigger town. The girls are going to school. You’ve got all those wonderful relationships of the girls growing up and learning what it’s like to be a human and interact with other people rather than just their isolation as sisters.

Lastly, I wanted to ask you about working with Alice and Skywalker, who give really strong performances as Laura and Mary. What’s it like for you both to play their dad on screen and also, along with Crosby, be the adults most often on set with them?

I just can’t say enough about Alice and Skywalker. First and foremost, they’re wonderful people. They’re kind, they’re funny, they’re energetic, they’re really intelligent, and they’re tremendous actresses. Alice’s technical proficiency in acting, and her ability to mix that with her emotional availability. is incredible in someone of any age, let alone to see it in someone as young as her. The same with Skywalker — her spontaneity and her energy and life on camera and her ability to play while still being technically proficient and talented and is a real wonder.

It’s really intimidating playing pretend dad, but they seem to like me. They’re the cool kids and I’m the dorky older bloke, but they seem to think I’m a little bit cool. At least I think so.