Night Court launched into its third season with a bang tonight, airing “The Judge’s Boyfriend’s Dad,” an episode that wrestles with the question: has Abby been accidentally sleeping with Dan Fielding’s son? Or possibly, her own half-brother? That’s quite a sitcom setup, and by the end of the night (court), we’ll have to see exactly what level of trauma the cast and crew of the light-hearted sitcom are in for.
Contributing writer Russ Burlingame spoke with Melissa Rauch about the connections she has made between The Big Bang Theory and Night Court, and what to expect in the show’s third season.
RUSS BURLINGAME: You and Wendie Malick have a shared history in the Big Bang Theory cinematic universe. Is there anybody from that world that you’d like to see come through the courtroom?
MELISSA RAUCH: Oh, goodness. Any of my Big Bang family, I would love to see come back. And there will be some Big Bang faces this season. I can’t exactly say who yet, but without giving spoilers, there will be Big Bang faces.
You obviously worked with Chuck Lorre, and Lorre has worked with a lot of people on this show, but aside from that, he’s one of the most experienced and expert producers in television, and he has a really solid team under him. Is there something that you learned there, not necessarily as an actor, but as an executive, that you can use to make Night Court better?
Oh, that’s a great question. I love that man so much, and all of those people from that world. Between Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady and Steve Molaro and Steve Holland, it was really just a wonderful experience and getting to watch them work. I think that’s something I took away is — trust that audience. They are there for us as a barometer for what works and what doesn’t. And not only do they provide the laughter and the rhythm for the scene, but they’re what our home audience will be feeling. So using that small focus group to know, “Okay, maybe this is a joke that we could go back in on and punch up and do another take.”
It’s also so thrilling to get a laugh line and see how the audience reacts differently, or even for scenes that they’re a little more grounded and based in heart, seeing how they react to that, and knowing how they’re reacting to the characters.
One of my first times on Big Bang, I had a line to Simon, where my character was needling him a bit. Right before I did it, they said to me, “Let’s see how the audience reacts.” They’re very protective of these characters. Then, the audience was like, “Ooh,” and the producers said, “We have to pull her back a little bit and go a little softer.” It was interesting to see them navigate that, because by that point it was late in season three, and they had already formed these relationships. I think learning that, and really trusting what the audience has to say, is huge. Its also obviously the beauty of [multi-camera sitcoms], which you don’t get in another format.
With a sitcom that’s this light, and when your character is so incredibly positive, how challenging is it to balance that with the moments where she’s frustrated, or she’s sad, or she’s growing as a person?
I love this. This is another thing I could talk about at length.
One thing that I loved about the original Night Court, and a lot of the sitcoms from the late ’80s, early ’90s, is the emotional pockets that they had. They weren’t afraid to really lay into them, or go to commercial break without a laugh, and really pull those heartstrings. It’s something that I was really looking forward to doing with this show, and I think the key with these characters is, we could crank up the comedy and have that be heightened, but at the heart we just want them all to be real and grounded.
For Abby with her relentless positivity, we wanted to make sure that it was grounded in something, and I didn’t want Abby to be positive for the sake of being positive. I wanted it to be coming from the fact that she chooses this light every day. In season one, we set up the fact that she’s in recovery. We have her, at the end of last season, dealing with the grief of losing her father. I think that’s a through line that’s really important to me to carry throughout — that this is an active choice for Abby. She is choosing to be in this state, and it’s not because she hasn’t experienced any difficulties.
I think same is true for Dan, in the fact that, we see this evolution of Dan Fielding. That was really something that we take from the original. There’s an episode of the original that I actually brought up in the pitch for this show — there was a moment with Dan Fielding, where it’s a two-part episode, he’s in the hospital, and he says to Harry Stone, “Of all the women that I’ve been with, not one of them has ever said ‘I love you.'”
It’s this really emotional moment for Dan Fielding, and that’s the core of who he is — that he could put on this big show, but at the heart of it, he’s someone who just wants to be loved, and that’s really what launches us into this incarnation of the show. We find out that Dan finally found that, he got married, he found that person to say, “I love you,” and he lost her. Which is why he’s now trying to find this next chapter in his life. And so, it’s all based in that, which gives us the ability to go as high as we can with the comedy from that grounded place.
See “The Judge’s Boyfriend’s Dad” tomorrow morning on Peacock and the NBC app! A gallery of preview images can be found here.