Melissa Rauch is returning home, both figuratively and literally. In 2021, nearly two years after The Big Bang Theory signed off after its 12-season run, Rauch returned to Warner Bros. studios in Los Angeles to begin filming the pilot for her new NBC series, Night Court. It was a stone’s throw away from stage 24, where she spent 10 out of the show’s 12 seasons playing Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski Wolowitz.
Her success on Big Bang helped launch her production company—and deal—at Warner Bros, but Rauch’s career dreams really started at home in New Jersey as a kid, in her bedroom, as she watched iconic sitcoms on a small 13-inch TV. There was one show in particular that, unbeknownst to Rauch at the time, would impact her for years to come: Night Court.
“I have such a distinct memory of watching those opening credits with the iconic theme song playing,” Rauch says of the NBC hit that aired from 1984-1992. “I vividly remember being transfixed by it in my childhood bedroom. I think I knew I didn’t understand a lot of the humor and that made me even more compelled to watch—like I wanted to figure it out.”
Now, some 39 years to nearly the day it first premiered, Rauch gets the chance to do that—theme song and all—with one of the show’s original cast members, John Larroquette. (The series premieres tonight, January 17, with two episodes on NBC and Peacock.)
“It was shows like Night Court that made me fall in love with sitcoms,” she says. “The little girl version of me would be pinching herself…in between shoving Doritos in her face, as that is what the little-girl version of me was usually doing.”
That New Jersey bedroom with the 13-inch TV is thousands of miles away from her dressing room and production offices at Warner Bros., but the feeling of nostalgia is still the same. And instead of just acting on Night Court—as the late Harry Stone’s daughter, Abby Stone—she’s also executive producing the series alongside her husband, Winston Rauch. It marks her first major TV role since Big Bang, and while fans of that iconic sitcom will no doubt be excited to see Rauch back on network television, Abby is very different from Bernadette.
Here, Rauch opens up about how Night Court has evolved, the Big Bang Easter egg in the first episode, and the one thing she refuses to spend money on.
