If you were an ’80s kid, you most likely spent a good portion of your childhood watching Little House on the Prairie. Most of the time, tuning in was a pleasant experience. Maybe Laura and Nellie would have some sort of confrontation or there might be some financial struggle worrying Pa, but it could be said the Little House was peak feel-good TV…except, of course, for when it wasn’t.
There were plenty of times when the show got suddenly, surprisingly dark (Ma’s trippy experience with blood poisoning, the horrifying fire at the school for the blind), but the one episode that really continues to haunt viewers over 40 years later involved Albert, his girlfriend Sylvia, and the scariest clown ever.
Titled “Sylvia,” the two-part episode was both written and directed by Michael Landon (Pa), and stars Olivia Barash as Sylvia, a young girl who gets sexually assaulted by a mystery man in a clown mask. When Sylvia ends up pregnant as a result, everybody in Walnut Grove shuns her except for Albert Ingalls (Matthew Labyorteaux). The two youngsters are in love, and Albert plans to marry Sylvia and raise the child as his own (Sylvia, famously, hopes to wear “flowers in her hair” at their wedding).
Unfortunately (and traumatically, for viewers), that’s not what happens at all. When the evil clown tries to attack Sylvia again, she falls from a ladder in her attempt to escape and dies (as Albert cries, reassuring her that somebody they will get married and she will wear flowers in her hair). Um…yikes?! Talk about a bummer.
In a 2023 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Barash admitted that while she knew her role on Little House would be a “dramatic” one, she didn’t know all the details.
“I didn’t know about the clown mask,” she said, laughing. “I knew that the character was going to be raped. I was ready to do it. I wanted to do something dramatic. My mom was very overprotective. Because it was television, we thought [it wouldn’t be as graphic]. I was not allowed to go up for movies like The Exorcist.”
When she did finally see the clown mask on actor Richard Jaeckel (who played the town blacksmith), she was just as freaked out as the rest of us.
“I was like, ‘Ahhh!’ It scared me,” she recalled, adding, “I was afraid of clowns anyway!”
“I was afraid of clowns growing up, I had a fear of the circus and clowns. So that worked for me,” she continued. “I was considered for an Emmy nomination for my role. I was a kid, and I didn’t really have a manager at that point. We didn’t know how to [campaign and] parlay it into the nomination. But I got the letter from the Academy, and it said I was being considered. So that was kind of a big deal.”
Barash definitely deserved the nomination for her emotional performance, for sure. And as far as scary clowns from TV and movies go, you can forget about Pennywise…the Little House clown was way more terrifying.
Related: ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Actress Faces Home Eviction Amid Health & Financial Struggles
