“The reason I opened my big fat mouth, was because someone else opened hers,” Gilbert tells PEOPLE

Melissa Gilbert; Megyn Kelly. Photo:

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty; Ivan Apfel/Getty

Melissa Gilbert speaks out about the things that are important to her.

After making headlines for her recent comments reacting to Megyn Kelly’s tweet about the Little House on the Prairie reboot, the actress, 60, tells PEOPLE it was never her intention to speak out on the new series, recently announced by Netflix.

“Listen, I wasn’t going to say a word. I really wasn’t. Because it’s a separate story, we’re not involved. I think everyone has a right to tell any story they want to in any way they want to and I think there’s a great deal of room in the Little House universe for multiple stories and multiple points of view,” she explains.

“I think if it does well, when the water rises, all boats float. So I don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with, and the reason I opened my big fat mouth, was because someone else opened hers,” Gilbert asserts.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.  

Melissa Gilbert as Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder, Michael Landon as Charles Philip Ingalls.

NBCU Photo Bank

Little House on the Prairie’s Dean Butler Addresses Differences in Reboot, Reveals Why It Will ‘Never’ Be Like the OG Series

“I merely pointed out the fact that to deny the, and I use air quotes, ‘woke-ism’ of the original series is a huge mistake because the stories we were telling were the stories of what was actually going on in this country in the 1970s through the lens of the 1870s.”

Laughing, she adds, “That was Michael Landon, who was a Republican, by the way. I keep picturing in my head what he would do if he was alive today and heard what she said.”

While there’s room for agreeing to disagree, Gilbert says that she doesn’t appreciate the “assumption” that telling stories from different people is “a bad thing.”

“It’s hyperbole and it’s damaging and it’s wrong. I didn’t jump into it for any particular political reasons or anything like that. I just wanted to set the record straight. The fans all pretty much, largely I would say, said, ‘Exactly, Little House was that.”

Melissa Gilbert as Laura Ingalls Wilder on ‘Little House on the Prairie’, Melissa Gilbert at the opening night party for “Medea” at the BAM Harvey Theater on January 30, 2020 in New York City.

NBCUniversal via Getty; Lars Niki/Getty Images for BAM

She adds, “It opened our eyes to a lot of things that were going on in our world then and now. There’s a reason why it had such a huge resurgence in 2020, and it wasn’t just a pandemic. It was the summer of racial unrest. People were leaning into stories like the Wisdom of Solomon and all of the stories we did about racism and nativism. And I think the show lives on because a lot of the stories we told are still problems.”

As for the upcoming series, which Gilbert clarifies is “a remake, not a reboot,” she says that there’s no need for it take anything from the original.

“There’s no reason to capture the spirit of the original at all. I’m hoping, and from what I understand, is that the remake will hew closer to the books than we did. There’s a lot of information and beautiful stories to mine from the actual writings of Little House,” Gilbert points out.

“There’s no reason to go off-roading and adding characters that didn’t exist. There’s plenty of people in the Little House world that still haven’t been talked about on our version of the show. We really twisted the true story around quite a bit.”

Melissa Gilbert as Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder, Alison Arngrim as Nellie Oleson.

NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

As for her own future in the Little House universe, Gilbert admits she doesn’t see herself going back.

“That’s a conversation to be had another day, or maybe not. My knee-jerk reaction is that I think they should create their own whole universe and maybe not try and cross things over too much or cross the streams as it were.”

Gilbert’s plate is plenty full. She has a guest-starring role as Georgie McGill on Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart, which reunites her with Michael Landon Jr. She continues to build Modern Prairie, the brand she co-founded with Nicole Haase which has its own online community.

The actress is also currently starring in the off-Broadway play Still at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture’s Loreto Theater in New York City, through March 23.