Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated by Alison Arngrim

Author:Alison Arngrim [Arngrim, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9780061962141
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-06-14T10:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

MELISSA AND ME…OR “TO PEE OR NOT TO PEE”

NELLIE: Half the time, you don’t even SMELL like a girl! You’re either sweaty, or you stink of fish!

LAURA: Well…I sweat a lot, and I fish a lot!

If you haven’t been up to beautiful Sonora, California, or seen the majestic Stanislaus River, I will tell you, it’s breathtaking. The river is also freezing cold and has incredibly strong currents. People drown in it regularly. So, of course, the producers decided in Season 2 that it would be a good idea to stick me and Melissa in this river and see if we lived long enough to finish the show. (And you thought the British invented Survivor?) The episode was called “The Campout” and involved the Olesons and the Ingallses going off into the woods on an ill-fated camping spree, resulting in Nellie’s near drowning.

Now, the producers were not without mercy. First off, both Melissa and I were given wet suits to wear under our costumes. This not only provided an element of flotation but also kept the cold water from direct contact with our bodies. A lot of the people who fell into the river without wet suits or vests found that their chest muscles tended to seize up in the cold, making it even more difficult to breathe and/or swim, causing them to die quickly. In addition to being spared that, we had numerous safety measures in place. In the scene where we are floating downstream, clinging to what appears to be a clump of driftwood and old bushes, we are actually holding on to a large, black inflated inner tube covered in driftwood and old bushes (hard to sink).

Unfortunately, we were not tied to this craft in any way. It was our responsibility to hold on. Besides, there was that bit at the end of the episode where we had to abandon our clump and swim to shore (very dicey). At one point, William Claxton, who was directing this episode, briefly considered a sequence where we would have gone over some medium-size falls with the raft. (Well, not Melissa and me—professional stuntwomen pretending to be us.) Mercifully, someone suggested they first try a shot with dummies. On the first bump, the heads were torn from the bodies on impact. The rest was obliterated shortly thereafter. Needless to say, that sequence was removed from the script.

As it was, all we had to do was not be stupid enough to let go of the raft, and when we reached the one safe part of the river where we could realistically paddle to shore, we’d just have to remember not to stop paddling at any point, and we’d pretty much be okay. As we were preparing to shoot the scene, William Claxton explained the situation: “All right, all you have to do is go from here to over there. It’s not that far, or that deep. If for some reason the current catches you, you slip, or you lose your footing or whatever, don’t panic.

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