Little House on the Prairie Alum Jason Bateman Says ‘Everybody Love’ Michael Landon

• Jason Bateman remembered his time as a child actor on Little House on the Prairie as James Cooper Ingalls in a new episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast
• Bateman compared Little House star, director and producer Michael Landon to George Clooney
• The actor said the beloved ’80s series — and Landon — inspired him to pursue his own directing career

Jason Bateman is remembering his earliest inspiration: Michael Landon.

On the Feb. 24 episode of SiriusXM’s Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Bateman, 56, remembered how his time on Little House of the Prairie — and seeing star, director and executive producer Michael Landon work on set — sparked his desire to be a director.

Bateman first began acting in commercials as a child before he was cast in his first role as James Cooper Ingalls on Little House in the show’s seventh and eighth seasons. James was a young boy who was friends with the Ingalls family. He and his sister Cassandra (Missy Francis) lost their parents in a carriage accident and were eventually adopted by Landon and Karen Grassle’s Pa and Ma Ingalls.  

“I was starting to really notice what this magic trick is of making fake life,” Bateman said about his childhood on set. “We all look through the paper towel tube when you’re a kid … And outside that tunnel, it’s stuff you can’t see, the microphone and the lights and all that stuff. And so just inside that tube needs to be pristine.”

He started watching how the people on set made that “fake” life. “Michael Landon was the director, executive producer, star, writer. Everybody loved him,” Bateman said. 

“George Clooney would be the perfect comparison today,” the Zootopia star continued. “His ease with people, with the process, with the business, with Just Joe on the street. Women are crazy about him. Guys wanna be his buddy.”

“Watching him juggle all those balls and be this leader and presence on a set and be kind with people, but also be kind of a stern boss if he needs to, that was pretty inspirational,” the Ozark star said. Before Little House, Landon appeared in the hit series Bonanza and became a massive star. O’Brien, 61, told Bateman, “I can’t believe you even knew him.”

Bateman also credited his dad, producer Kent Bateman, for exposing him to art house films and teaching him “what directing is and what acting is and what’s good and what’s bad.”

“It planted the seed,” Bateman said. “I was always sort of tracking [directing] and wanting to do it and I was paying attention to it on every set I was on after Little House.”

Bateman went on to star in the sitcom The Hogan Family, where he also got his first directing credit. He continued to appear on sitcoms including Simon and George and Leo, but by the end of the 1990s he was focused on TV directing as the next phase of his career. 

“I wanted to turn my history of doing sitcoms into a positive instead of the negative that I felt it was at the time, and let all that experience maybe get me hired as a director,” he said. But in the middle of that career shift, he was cast in Arrested Development. He did direct on that series and went on to direct episodes of Ozark and his upcoming series Black Rabbit.

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Melissa Gilbert, who starred in Little House on the Prairie as Laura, opened up to PEOPLE in 2024 about the impact Landon had on her life, too.

“Michael was the quarterback, right? So he set the tone of what we were doing,” she said of the star, who died in 1991 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. “Mine was unique in that I was the only cast member who regularly socialized with him and his family.” She said that their families spent spring break together, and she also went to the same school as his children. 

“The show itself is just so special and so wonderfully well written,” she added, “but also because that’s my childhood and that’s my surrogate family. I have these wonderfully elaborate ‘home movies’ with many people who are not with us anymore, and I get to revisit them now when I watch a rerun of Little House.”