‘Little House on the Prairie' Star Reveals the One Michael Landon Rule That Helped Shape His Own TV Hit 20 Years Later
Linwood Boomer opened up about his past as an actor on Little House on the Prairie-and how working with Michael Landon influenced his work as creator and showrunner of the hit sitcomMalcolm in the Middle two decades later.
During an appearance on The Joe Vulpis Podcast, Boomer, 70, was asked if he took any lessons or experiences from Little House on the Prairie when he created Malcolm in the Middle.
"Not so much to creating but the way the show ran," the actor shared, before explaining how he treated the child stars on the Emmy-winning comedy series.
"Little kids should not be full-time employees," he said. "You know, they should not have adult kind of jobs and adult kind of responsibilities. And I think it can be very harmful to a kid to be in that situation where they're supporting the family and they're sort of the authority figure or power figure in a family and they're like nine, you know, they're not equipped to handle it."
Boomer added that on the Malcolm set, he did everything he could to let the young actors on the show be kids. "We're not going to call their agents if they show up five minutes late because they were busy playing," he shared. "We're not going to give them lectures about what they need to do. We're not going to tell the teachers that they have to delay school a little bit and keep it quiet because, you know, we need to get this shot in."
The actor and producer reiterated that he followed all of the rules about child labor laws to the letter, then noted that Landon was the same way on the Little House set, which also featured a large cast of child actors.
"I think that has always been like a thing that I carry because I saw Michael was really good about that with the kids," he said. "And the hours were set up so that the kids could be kids. And he ran the show, he had it organized enough that those situations where we're not going to get a shot with the kid because the kid says he has to go home and we, you know, wasted time on this other thing and now we're going to ask the kid to, you know, waive his rights. That never happened because it was sort of like, we have to get this organized in a way to make sure we get our stuff on time, and we're not, you know, even tempted to ask the kids or their parents to bend the rules a little bit. Which worked out."
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Boomer joined the cast of Little House on the Prairie in 1978, playing Adam Kendall, a teacher at a school for the blind who wed Mary Ingalls (Melissa Sue Anderson). The actor appeared in 35 episodes of the NBC historical drama through 1981. Boomer went on to create and produce Malcolm in the Middle, which aired for seven seasons, from 2000 to 2006, on Fox.
In April, Boomer told Collider he was "all for" the upcoming Little House on the Prairie reboot, based on the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series, which is set to premiere on Netflix in July.
"I know the world of it is completely different. It's much closer to the books," he said. "Michael Landon just had that thing of that family and then just ran with it. It was a great thing for what it was, but it wasn't what the books were, which was a little bit grimmer of a life. To me, I think it's much more appropriate now because I think people understand that vocabulary, that things can sort of be grim and really tough, and you can still have that loving family in that situation, and it still works."
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This story was originally published June 16, 2026 at 11:24 AM.