A one-woman show about a presidential daughter.
A movie about a very raunchy Olympian.
So many trips to the happiest place on Earth.
Melissa Rauch and Winston Beigel have been on plenty of creative and personal adventures,
and we’ve got the inside scoop on them all.
Melissa Rauch and Winston Beigel have been married since 2007.
Before they were a couple, they were both busy studying at Marymount Manhattan College.
She was working on an acting degree and also performing stand-up comedy, while he wanted
more than anything to be a comedy writer.
When they first crossed paths, the connection was solely creative.
As she recalled on the At Home with Linda & Drew Scott podcast,
"We were barely, I mean barely, friends when we actually started writing together."
After they became writing partners, Rauch and Beigel started spending a lot of time
together, which had the side benefit of helping them figure out if they were compatible or
not.
As she noted to RogerEbert.com in 2016,
"That was a great training ground for our relationship.
If we could figure out a script together in these close quarters and not kill each other,
then we're golden, we're okay, at least for now."
Shortly after graduating from college, Rauch and Beigel were working on a script about
growing up and entering adulthood.
Alas, it wasn't fully clicking.
But then inspiration struck on one fateful evening.
As she recalled on At Home with Linda & Drew Scott,
"We saw Jenna Bush speaking at the Republican National Convention on TV.
She was about the same age as us, and we got the idea to, sort of, combine a fictional
story about her with [our idea]."
It was then that the duo's one-woman show The Miss Education of Jenna Bush was born.
Rauch took on the leading role and began performing it all over New York City in 2005.
The show generated a good deal of buzz, as it was a hit at NYC's Fringe festival in 2005,
and outlets like New York Magazine and The New York Times praised Rauch's performance.
After finding success in the theater world, Rauch and Beigel decided to pack their bags
and leave the Big Apple for Los Angeles.
But then they discovered that the entertainment capital had a much different audience than
they expected.
As she revealed to Backstage in 2020,
"We did a showcase of [Miss Education], and not a lot of people showed up because not
a lot of people see theater in L.A. — so that was another lesson."
Over the next few months, both Rauch and Beigel had trouble booking gigs.
So to lift their spirits, they decided to visit the happiest place on earth.
As Rauch noted to Esquire in 2013,
"When I was out of work when I first moved to L.A., one of the first things my husband
and I did was buy season's passes to Disney and whenever I was bummed out about work,
we would go to Space Mountain, and it was like a physical injection of anti-depressants."
"I don't know about you guys, but I'm gonna make a beeline for the place that gives you
a princess makeover."
"Ooh, that sounds like fun."
On The Big Bang Theory, Bernadette became a mom multiple times, and so did the woman
who played her, as Rauch and Beigel are the proud parents of two children.
But it wasn't an easy process for either of them.
Upon announcing the birth of their daughter Sadie in 2017, Rauch opened up about her first
pregnancy in the hopes of helping other women who had been through pregnancy loss.
As she wrote in an essay for Glamour,
"The miscarriage I experienced was one of the most profound sorrows I have ever felt
in my life."
When Rauch and Beigel found out they were expecting a son in 2020, they didn't anticipate
another difficult journey, although the world had different plans.
As Rauch wrote in her essay,
"My husband had to stay home with our daughter since our original plan of having family come
to town — as well as our backup plans — were no longer options due to COVID-19."
Ultimately, Beigel was able to be by his wife's side virtually as they welcomed their son
Brooks into the world.
If the Winter Games or the Summer Games are happening, it's safe to assume that Melissa
Rauch and Winston Beigel are tuning in.
Like many viewers across the globe, they make it a point to follow what is arguably the
most popular event.
As she admitted to Hypable in 2016,
"I was a huge gymnastics fan but had no gymnastics ability whatsoever."
Understandably, Rauch has always been in awe of the serious skills that these athletes
take to the mat every four years at the Olympics.
And it's not like her and Beigel's love for the sport doesn't go on hiatus every four
years.
As she revealed to RogerEbert.com,
"We actually got season passes to the UCLA gymnastics tournament, and we would go every
weekend to watch these meets and sort of stalk the athletes."
That dedicated fandom eventually turned out to be great research for the time that Rauch
tackled the role of an Olympic gymnast in The Bronze.
When Melissa Rauch was no longer getting offers for roles that she wanted, she and her husband
decided to write them.
As she explained during an interview with SidewalksTV.com,
"I sort of have always looked towards creating my own material as a way of writing myself
out of a box or not having to wait on Hollywood or someone else to give me a chance to do
something."
So Rauch and Beigel took their love of the Olympics and turned it into a screenplay called
The Bronze, which tells the story of a bronze medalist gymnast whose star has faded despite
her efforts.
They were set on Rauch playing the lead, but they had to deal with studios who wanted a
bigger star.
Rather than compromise their vision, they began financing production with their own
credit cards.
Throughout all the challenges of filming the movie, being together was the most important
thing for the couple.
As Rauch told the Los Angeles Times,
"One of my favorite things in life has always been writing with Winston.
So getting to actually see it come to fruition is a dream come true."
"Casey B. Anthony told us that men and women are equal."
"You mean Susan B. Anthony, right?"
"Both of 'em."
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