16 Mar 2016
by Mayim Bialik
Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik Image: Mayim Bialik
I’m going to be super honest right now–sometimes it’s hard to be happy for people when they have success you want for yourself. As an actor, I run into this all of the time. But here’s the thing about a real deeply connected friendship: you are so happy for the other person’s success, even if you crave it for yourself.
This is how it is with Melissa Rauch, who plays Bernadette on “The Big Bang Theory” with me. She co-wrote and is starring in her very own movie called “The Bronze,” and it comes out this Friday, March 18. It got huge rave reviews when it premiered at Sundance Film Festival–it is simply a powerhouse of a movie.
I excitedly interviewed Melissa about some of the things I wanted to know about the actual process of making a movie–particularly one about a former bronze-medal-winning gymnast who has to come to terms with her new life as a trainer of the next hot gymnast, with a chip on her shoulder and a potty-mouth that is as hysterical as it is startling.
Tell me in a nutshell what “The Bronze” is about.
“The Bronze” is about Hope Ann Greggory, a female gymnast who has been milking small town fame from her Bronze medal victory for way too long. She’s really stuck in a rut when we meet her: living in her father’s basement and unsure of how to move onto the next phase of her life. All of that changes, however, when she’s faced with the decision to either train a new rising star in town–or sabotage her in order to preserve her own legacy.
A lot of people may not know that in addition to being an actress, you have been writing for a long time. What kinds of stories are you interested in telling as a writer, and what in particular felt compelling about telling this story?
I’m most interested in writing the stories of flawed women (read: real), who are raw characters with layers that need to be peeled back. The attempt is always to ground their stories first, then crank up the comedy with the characters who inhabit that world. I like creating anything that helps me to contextualize an experience of life I’m struggling to understand personally.
One of these experiences is that of fame. It’s a weirdly magnetic and seductive force in American culture, yet it if you do attain it, it has literally no substance and it’s incredibly fickle. For example, early in my career, I suddenly had national weekly visibility working as a talking head comedian on Vh1’s “Best Week Ever.” During that time, I went to the food court of my local mall in New Jersey, and scored a free Wetzel Pretzel from being recognized, and this happened each time I went (in what became a bizarre, yet lovely ego-boosting ritual).
A year or so later, I was off the show and out of work, and the same kiosk manager who’d regularly gifted me the pretzel charged me full price. “The Bronze” is an exploration of a star’s rise and fall from a pedestal–a topic that has long been a source of fascination for me and my husband (who co-wrote the film and has witnessed all the peaks and valleys of my career).