Indulgent grandparents and well-fed friends aren’t the most demanding audience, but when Melissa Rauch picked up the microphone at her bat mitzvah party, she was still prepared — she’d been working on her comedy routine for a while .
“I did a tight 10 [minutes] For everyone between dinner and dessert because it was a captive audience,” Rauch says on Zoom.
An executive producer of the newly revamped “Night Court”—which she refers to as the “new boot” rather than the reboot—Rauch is the US show’s original judge Harold J. Stone’s daughter, Judge Abby Stone, also plays the role.
As a child, Rauch was a huge fan of the original NBC sitcom, which ran from 1984 to 1992. She spoke about her love of the show at a Television Critics Association panel in Los Angeles last winter.
“I remember being a kid, growing up in New Jersey and finding out that ‘Night Court’ wasn’t filmed in New York, going on a trip with my parents and saying, ‘ Where’s ‘Night Court’? I want to watch ‘Night Court’ and find out if these people are in LA,” she said.
In an interview for The Times of Israel, Rauch reflected on how from her previous series — the beloved “The Big Bang Theory,” which ended four years ago — in her new show, all of her comedy stems from her Judaism. Is.
From left: Dan Rubin, Kapil Talwalkar, Melissa Rauch, John Larroquette, Lacerta Nichock and Winston Rauch attend the NBC Universal ‘Night Court’ panel during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour at The Langham Huntington Hotel on January 15, 2023. in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Richard Shotwell / InVision / AP)
“I think about family dinners a lot, often around Jewish holidays,” says Rauch. “Celebrating Passover with my family is one of my favorites. Those dinners were just full of laughter. And that’s where I really fell in love with the idea of making people laugh because it was imitating my mother. It became such a driving force, oh, the happiness you can create for other people. And there’s something addictive about it.
And that copy of his mother? This became his distinguishing feature on “The Big Bang Theory”. As Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, Rauch looked as though she was consuming helium as she sped up to speed. He did that impersonation at his Bat Mitzvah party and it killed it.
That was in his home state of New Jersey, which Rauch still seriously pines for, even though he’s living in sunny LA. In fact, Roach jokes, she’s so jersey that she’s “just one bottle of hair dye from turning into Snooki.”
From New Jersey, Rauch went to Marymount Manhattan College, which has a demanding theater program. There, he began doing stand-up, although his love of form had started earlier.
Melissa Rauch poses for a portrait at the Four Seasons Hotel on March 8, 2016 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello / InVision / AP)
“It started when I was six because I became obsessed with ‘Star Search’ and watching people do celebrity impressions,” Rauch recalls. “I loved watching ‘Comic Relief.'” Whenever I saw stand-up, I was very curious about it. I remember one night, I was watching ‘Three’s Company’ with my parents, and I imitated Don Knotts. My dad started laughing and I had to delay my bedtime.
Soon enough, she realized she could use comedy to her advantage and ditched her impersonation. Rauch would seek out open mics to try them out, and no venue was too small.
“To the chagrin of the teachers in my conservatory program, I went and stood every night wherever I could, and a lot behind laundromats or really wherever I could get stage time,” she says. “And it was just such an amazing training ground. I did it all through college and during my time in New York, really. And then I ended up touring doing stand-up in colleges.
By the time she landed “The Big Bang Theory,” Rauch did stand-up, which included an entire act based around Jenna Bush.
Co-writers Melissa Rauch, right, and Winston Rauch, left, pose during the premiere of ‘The Bronze’ during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2015 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP)
Says Rauch, “I wanted to write a one-woman show when I graduated from college, really as a vehicle for myself because I wasn’t getting hired except to do a few short plays.” “So, my husband [Winston Rauch]Joe, my writing partner, we started writing a one-woman show for you about looking for your first job and trying to find your place in the world, and then we saw Jenna speak at the Republican convention.
“I realized that I was actually at the same point in my life as she was,” Rauch continues. “And then we realized, if we combine this with a story about Jenna and her finding her place in the world, and we set it before her first date night, her first day as a teacher, and She’s trying to get her life together. And then through that, we explored the presidency through, of course, Bush’s eyes. And we did that at the New York Fringe Festival.
That act was Rauch’s ticket to LA. She and Winston sold a pilot based on the idea to CBS, but like most pilots, it was not made.
Rauch continues to write and act; Her husband is the executive producer of “Night Court”. The series finds the actress playing an aggressively sunny character. Abby Stone’s optimism juxtaposes knowingly with her surroundings, Manhattan’s night court system, where gangsters and weirdos mix just as they did in the original.
Melissa Rauch as Abby Stone in ‘Night Court’. (Robert Trachtenberg / NBC / Warner Bros. Television)
“This is New York City, and the New York City of the ’80s is not the New York City of today,” executive producer Dan Rubin said at a Television Critics Association panel. “My home is New York. I love New York. It’s a strange place sometimes. There are strange things that people do, and at night, they just get stranger… anything can happen in that courtroom.” There is, and we certainly enjoy it.
Winston Rauch said, “People forget that Night Court is a real place in lower Manhattan, on which the Reinhold Weiss series is based.” “Now it’s in the Lonely Planet tour guide as a place where people can actually be entertained, as a place to see some sort of live entertainment, because people know it’s an ever-changing set of characters.” The cast is and, like Melissa said, an organic story generator. And that’s why we felt like we really had to do the series because there’s a million more stories to be told.
Rauch’s Abby has some demons – namely a drinking problem in her past and regret for those years. That background is more sympathetic to those who line up before her bench.
“She’s an eternal optimist,” Rauch says of her character. “But I don’t think it’s rooted in naivety or Pollyanna’s view of the world. I think she’s been through her fair share of struggles and grief, and so her optimism is really rooted in the fact that She has seen the darkness, and she is actively choosing the light because darkness is no longer an option for her.
With the first season now over, NBC has ordered 13 episodes for a second season, which Rauch explains “will resume filming later.” [writers’] strike.”
Typically, network shows go on hiatus in the spring until mid-summer, when scripted shows resume production, but Rauch plans to work this summer with the Writers Guild of America on strike and a possible strike for actors. Wasn’t making On June 4, the Directors Guild entered into a tentative agreement with the studio.
“I’m really looking forward to working for my pediatric cancer charity, Oscar’s Kids,” says Rauch. “And to spend time with my two kids. In the shade as much as humanly possible, because I basically burst into flames in the sun.