Jason Bateman Says He Was Hazed by ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Co-Stars

Jason Bateman is recalling his time on Little House on the Prairie — especially the hazing he says he faced at the hands of his older co-stars.

Bateman played the orphaned James Cooper on the 1970s drama in his first television role at the age of 11, a character who is adopted by the Ingalls family. He revealed to Hot Ones host Sean Evans that the role came with a bit of hazing from his onscreen family members.

After Evans fact-checked whether or not the older kids on set had pranked the youngster by informing him that his character would die, Bateman told the real story.

“Untrue,” he said. “What they did do was, they pinned me down on the ground, straddled me with knees on my shoulders, and gave me noogies or whatever they call it on my chest.”

“There was a hazing ritual on Little House on the Prairie?” Evans asked incredulously.

“Yeah. They knocked on my chest like I was a front door,” Bateman affirmed.

Ultimately, it was Bateman who got the last laugh. “I went to the makeup artist and said, ‘Put a big black-and-blue mark all over my chest,’” he recalled. “And then I went to their parents and I said, ‘Look what your kids did to me.’ And that was good. I got them in trouble.”

Perhaps the hazing was foreshadowing for Bateman’s character, who was often put through the wringer on Little House on the Prairie, which was based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved book series and revolved around the Ingalls family. He joined the nine-season show during Season 7, appearing throughout Season 8.

He looked back at the time with nostalgia, remembering in 2017 the late Michael Landon, who played patriarch Charles Ingalls as “somebody who had a huge influence on me.”

“The way in which everybody functioned was very familial,” Bateman told Variety at the time. “It was a warm place, and I remember in the few years that followed, when I would end up on sets that were less functional.”

Fans missing Little House are in luck, as Netflix is currently developing a reboot of the iconic series.