Melissa Rauch does a 180 as gymnast in ‘The Bronze’
Melissa Rauch recalls her first taste of fame while shopping back home in New Jersey. A Wetzel’s Pretzels vendor who was a fan gave her a free pretzel. But when her show was over, and she was back on the unemployment line, the guy didn’t even look her way the next time she was in his vicinity.
Such is the fleeting nature of fame. That experience, along with her show business ups and downs, sparked the idea for the comedy-drama she co-wrote with her husband, Winston. Produced by the Duplass brothers, the movie screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and is being released Friday, during an Olympic year — (no coincidence, she said).
“For me, being unemployed, working as a waiter, I was in the same dark place. Not getting that pretzel showed me how fickle fame was,” she said during a recent stop in St. Louis. She was in town to discuss her latest movie “The Bronze” with local media.
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Set in the competitive gymnastics arena, she plays Hope Ann Greggory, a stuck and bitter woman-child. For too many years, she has coasted on her glory days as a bronze medalist – competing with a torn Achilles heel — at the 2004 Summer Olympics, earning freebies and celebrity status in her hometown of Amherst, Ohio.
She lives in her dad’s basement, and sports teeny-bopper bangs and scrunchies, usually wearing her Team USA outfit. She looks cute and petite, but the nastiness comes out when she opens her mouth. She’s shockingly vulgar and browbeats anyone when she doesn’t get her way.
“Hope could have been like the heroes of our time who go on to inspire a new generation of gymnasts. Her father enabled her, and she is not able to re-set and re-engage in life,” she said.
“This is very much Hope’s journey. It was important to us not to crank up the comedy and have a joke a minute, that it would have drama, too,” she said.
As for her character’s audacity, she defended portraying a woman as despicable. She wanted Hope to be authentic, to be mean and rude because of her inability to move forward.
“Women feel the need to be likable. It’s touched on a lot. There are a lot of male anti-heroes but not a ton of women. Roles like Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine’ show great layers and complexities, and those are the roles I am drawn to,” she said. “Like Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve,’ who was bitter and angry, and allowed to be that way. We didn’t want to water it down, make it palatable. Hope does not like herself.”
The sour girl role is a 180-degree turn from the character she currently portrays on “The Big Bang Theory.” She joined the popular CBS sitcom in the third season as Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski, then married Howard Wolowitz in the fifth season, a year after becoming a regular.
She is certainly stretching her range in “The Bronze.” She joked, with a sly smile, about the explicit sex scene with a rival coach played by Sebastian Stan (“The Martian”): “They say to write what you know.”
Because they were portraying world class gymnasts, the scene was choreographed and body doubles were used in certain parts.
Stan, who will be in “Captain America: Civil War” this May, was a real pro about the role, “working for nothing, he just went for it.”
She also praised Thomas Middleditch, who plays Ben aka “Twitchy,” for his care in not making the character a caricature.
Gary Cole, who played her father, was a dream to work with, she said. “So kind and such a phenomenal actor.”
She was also impressed by newcomer Haley Lu Richardson as the young gymnast, pointing out that she was a real find.
The only trait Melissa shares with a competitive gymnast is that she’s 4 feet, 11 inches tall. Other than that, she replicated the voice of her college roommate from Ohio to give Hope a nasally Midwest tone. She is not a gymnast, by a long shot.
“I am super-unathletic,” she admitted.
The character is not based on scandal-plagued figure-skater Tanya Harding, either, she said, with one exception: “The bangs very much so.”
She confessed that her ‘inner Jersey girl’ loved wearing the bangs during filming.
While growing up in Marlboro, N.J., Rauch said she remembers exactly where she was when she first got a laugh.
“I was a super-shy weird nerdy kid,” she said, noting she later would flip the switch on stage.
“I was watching ‘Three’s Company’ with my dad, and I started imitating Don Knotts, and my dad was laughing. It was the best feeling in the world. From then on, I was always trying to make him laugh.”
She first gained notoriety with a one-woman comedy show “The Miss Education of Jenna Bush,” portraying President George W. Bush’s daughter, which received much acclaim in New York City.
She appeared as a talking head on Vh-1’s “Best Week Ever” (2005-2009) and worked on the sitcom “Kath and Kim” as Tina 2008-2009 and as Summer on the HBO drama “True Blood” in 2010.
“She is thrilled to be part of award-winning “The Big Bang Theory” ensemble.
“It’s a dream come true. They’re all like my brothers and sisters. They will be at the premiere. I came into that cast in the third season, and I was in the unemployment line the week before. I cry every Tuesday after the taping. I cry when we come out to take our bows,” she said.
Next up, she is the voice of Francine in “Ice Age: Collision Course.”
She and her husband have multiple projects in the work as well as things that sit on shelves.
“I am always cautiously optimistic,” she said. “(‘The Bronze’) is such a labor of love. We put everything into it.”
This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 11:45 AM with the headline "Melissa Rauch does a 180 as gymnast in ‘The Bronze’."