Featured Image Credit: CBS
Topics: TV and Film, Celebrity
Jess Battison
One of the stars of The Big Bang Theory had to call their mum after they ‘accidentally masturbated’ during a scene.
Melissa Rauch joined the cast of the legendary sitcom in 2009 as Bernadette Rostenkowski. Appearing in season three right through to the finale in 2019, the now 45-year-old was eventually married to Simon Helberg’s character, Howard Wolowitz.
And while she became a seasoned The Big Bang Theory star, the actor had a bit of a, well, slip up on her first day of filming that her mum ended up being ‘upset’ about for quite some time.
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She probably earned a bit of a reputation among the crew and her cast mates from this too, as there was a misunderstanding about her ‘masturbating’ in front of a live studio audience.
During an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien back in 2013, the actor opened up about her awkward experience on set.
"The first episode of the season I had a little...incident," Rauch explained. "We were shooting a scene and I'm in a hotel room bed.
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"And in my own personal life, whenever I get under covers, I'm always really cold.
"So I just tend to pull the covers up really high and just leave my head out, and then I kind of like warm up my hands like I'm a boy scout starting a fire with sticks or something."
While it might have seemed like a good idea to the star, the more you visualise just what this would’ve looked like from outside the covers, the more wrong you realise it is.
The Night Court star continued: "So I'm under the covers and it's really cold on set, because they keep it cold, and I'm under there and we're shooting the scene and - out of habit - I'm doing this (rubbing hands together) under the covers.
"We shot the whole scene, there's a studio audience. And after the scene was over, our director and producer came over to me and they were like, 'We need to see your hands in the next take - it looked like you were having way too much fun with yourself under the covers'.”
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To make matters worse, Rauch says she was chatting to some audience members afterwards when a little boy said: “Did you shoot that scene again with your hands out because it looked weird? Because my dad said it looked real weird.”
After her day of filming with The Big Bang Theory, Rauch decided to call her mum and fill her in on the tea.
The star explained: "She asked me how the first episode went and I told her and she was mortified.
"She's like, 'I hope people understand that you weren't really doing that, that's disgusting! People have been fired from that, people have lost their careers for doing that in movie theatres!'
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"She's so upset about it. So now every week I just keep on saying, 'Uh, something else happened at work...'
"And she's like, 'Stop doing that! You did it again? It's enough, keep your hands to yourself!"
Additional words by Olivia Burke.