In the 1980s, towards the end of the run of Little House on the Prairie, an NBC show about life in Minnesota in the late 1800s that was very popular, new actors were brought in to give the show new life.
In the last few seasons of the show, Melissa Francis, who is now a well-known business journalist and Fox News anchor, moved into Walnut Grove. The time she spent on "Little House on the Prairie"
Francis joined the cast of the prairie drama in 1981 when he was eight years old. He was there at the same time as Jason Bateman, who was eleven years old and is now famous for being the star of Arrested Development.
She was hired, along with Bateman, to bring back the show's youth, since the main characters, Melissa Gilbert and Melissa Sue Anderson, were now young adults.
"Mom said the story was basically a nighttime soap opera," Francis wrote in Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter, her book about acting as a child with an overbearing mother. "I was starting to realize how important my role was."
In 2017, she talked to Fox Business about the lessons Michael Landon, the show's star, taught the young actors.
She said, "I grew up on the prairie." "We had a great time. One of the most interesting things I learned from Little House on the Prairie was that Michael Landon was one of the first people in Hollywood to figure out how the business works.
"He owned that show. He made it, directed it, and was in it. He was the first one there in the morning and the last one to leave at night. He worked so hard that it was amazing."
What Melissa Francis learned while living in the country
She went on to say what Landon had come to expect from everyone on the show, even the younger actors.
"I recently talked to Melissa Gilbert, and we talked about how none of the Little House on the Prairie kids ever robbed a dry cleaner or went to rehab. And one of the reasons was that [Landon] taught us to work hard.
"Once the cameras started rolling, we were there for business. He chose a lot of kids who were good workers, but he also taught us the value and pride of a hard day's work. He called me "one-take Missy" because I could get out there and do it right away, which he loved. Giving up acting for the life of a journalist
The 47-year-old stopped wanting to act when there were no more roles for her to do. In 1995, she got her Bachelor's degree in Economics from Harvard University. Francis joined Power Lunch and The Call, two CNBC shows that air in the afternoon, as a co-host.
Then, in 2012, she went to work for Fox Business Network, where she is an anchor on the afternoon show After the Bell and a co-anchor on Outnumbered.
In an interview with The Hill in 2012, the Californian woman talked about how she didn't find it easy to go from acting to journalism.
"When I got my first job on air, I think my news director was disappointed because he thought, "Oh, she's an actor, she'll be great on air." But it was so different from acting, where everything was planned out and you had no control over what you said. Francis couldn't believe that she still got nervous in front of a camera after all those years working on TV shows.
"The first time I did a live shot, I looked like a deer caught in headlights. When the anchor threw it to me, I just stopped moving. I had a hard time getting used to being on live TV. I almost think it was harder because I had been practicing so much." Melissa Francis is a long way from the prairie, but she has found her place.
Source: Cheatsheet.com