Melissa Rauch with Simon Helberg (
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The “Big Bang” cast (from bottom left): Simon Helberg, Melissa Rauch, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Jim Parsons, Mayim Bialik and Kunal Nayyar. (
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On CBS’s top-rated comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” Melissa Rauch plays biologist Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, wife of Simon Helberg’s Howard Wolowitz, and beleaguered daughter-in-law of Howard’s grating, never-seen mother.
As such, Rauch is often challenged with doing two voices quite different from her own. There’s Bernadette’s soothing, high-pitched purr, and, when drawn into battle with her mother-in-law, an eerie, haranguing imitation of the woman that could blow the doors off the set.
Both of these voices, it turns out, were inspired by people near and dear to her: her parents.
“Mrs. Wolowitz sounds very similar to my father, and my mom has a very high-pitched voice that’s not exactly Bernadette’s voice, but it’s similar,” says the New Jersey native.
“I come from a house of screamers, very similar to the Wolowitz family,” says Rauch, 32. “When my husband came to my parents’ house for the first time, he asked, ‘Why is everyone screaming? Why are they so angry?’ I said, ‘No one’s angry. This is just how we communicate.’ ”
If there’s any screaming on the set of “The Big Bang Theory” these days, it’s certainly yelps of joy. Now in its sixth season, the show is both TV’s most-watched comedy and a television anomaly, in that its ratings and rankings increase as the series ages, partially fueled by a continuous flow of reruns on TBS.
As of March 10, the series was averaging almost 19 million viewers per episode, the third-highest ranking series behind “NCIS” and NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”
That success is fueled by a cast that Rauch says is every bit as fun-loving as the friends they play, as demonstrated by the on-set flash mob organized by castmate Kaley Cuoco last November that surprised the show’s producers and writers, and sent a video of the surprising dance viral.
“Kaley organized this experience where her sister, who is a choreographer, came in,” says Rauch. “We did two rehearsals, the cast and crew surprised the writers in the middle of a taping, and the audience flipped out.”
While the cast may be a blast, one thing they aren’t, to the possible surprise of its fans, is nerds.
“Everyone’s really different from their characters,” says Rauch. “Simon Helberg is a wonderful husband and father, and so completely the opposite of the sleazy Wolowitz. Mayim (Bialik, who plays Amy Farrah Fowler) is a [real life] Ph.D., and knows an incredible amount about science. So on paper, she’s the closest. But she’s nothing like Amy, just similar in the sense that she knows massive amounts about the brain.”
Given how the show’s male characters, especially, have come to represent all that is nerdy — their main hangout is the local comic-book store — there are times when viewers expect the actors to be more geeky than they really are.
“When I go into the Mac Store, they expect me to know a lot more thado,” says Rauch. “One person there actually told me that he has never seen so few apps on a phone. I have no idea what I’m doing with anything electronic, and I think they were shocked because of the show I come from.”
Rauch studied acting in New York at Marymount Manhattan College, and got her start as a stand-up comedian on stages throughout the city, including the same open mike in the back room of Hamburger Harry’s in Times Square, where Zach Galifianakis first graced a stage.
After a few years of stand-up comedy, plus pop culture talking-head work on VH1’s “Best Week Ever,” Rauch and her longtime writing partner — her then-boyfriend, now-husband Winston Beigel, whom she met and began collaborating with in college — created a one-woman show for her called “The Miss Education of Jenna Bush,” inspired by seeing the president’s daughter, on stage at the 2004 Republican Convention, brag to her sister that the crowd loved her, unaware that her mike was on.
The show generated stellar reviews, had a sold-out run as well as being named outstanding solo show and audience favorite at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival; she also landed an agent. Rauch and Beigel moved to LA soon after, and she scored small parts on television and in film before landing the role of Bernadette.
In addition to her work on “The Big Bang Theory,” Rauch still writes with her husband. They have a few film scripts currently in development as well as short videos for the Funny or Die Web site. She also recently played a prostitute hired by Owen Wilson in “You Are Here,” the upcoming feature debut from “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner.
“She radiates sunshine, has great timing and attitude,” Weiner says. “You cannot believe what comes out of her mouth.”
All else aside, Rauch is most thrilled for her role on the most popular comedy on television.
“TV was my life, growing up,” she says. “I ran home from school to watch television, and even did my homework with the TV on — my mom had a rule that as long as my grades didn’t fall, I was allowed to. So it was my dream to work in television.”
THE BIG BANG THEORY
Thursday, 8 p.m., CBS