Kunal Nayyar Talks Romancing His Big Bang Co-Star on Night Court: ‘It’s Like Kissing Your Sister!’ — Plus, Will He Be Back?
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Tuesday’s Night Court.
Big Bang fans, were you a little weirded out seeing Kunal Nayyar and Melissa Rauch kiss on this week’s Night Court? You weren’t the only ones.
“It’s really funny because it’s like kissing your sister,” Nayyar tells TVLine with a laugh. He guest-starred on Tuesday’s episode as suave fashion designer Martini Toddwallis, who was enchanted by Rauch’s sunny judge Abby and adopted her as his new muse — and lover. That did lead to some awkwardness on set, Nayyar admits, remembering that Rauch’s “husband [Winston], who’s also producing the show and is one of my best friends, is standing right there” while they shot their kissing scene.
The episode did include a nod to Nayyar and Rauch’s history on The Big Bang Theory, with Abby telling Martini at one point, “I feel like I’ve met you before.” (She played Bernadette on Big Bang, while Nayyar played Raj.) That line “was not there in the original draft or when we were rehearsing,” Nayyar reveals. “I think that they did want to do, I think consciously, a little wink. ‘Have we met in a previous world where I was a different human being?’… It was definitely a nod to the celestial past.”
Nayyar even altered his appearance to make sure the studio audience got the connection: “I hadn’t shaved, really, since 2019. I had this big beard.” But he made sure to shave before coming to the Night Court set so he would resemble Raj: “We really wanted that reaction” from the studio audience, he remembers. “We really wanted the reunion to look as if it was these two characters meeting in another life.”
He definitely enjoyed the reunion, too: He asked Rauch if he could add a line where Martini says, “Till we meet again,” he recalls, “just in case we want to revisit this. And that was a subtle way to say to Melissa, ‘I’d like to come back, obviously, and play again and work with you again and enjoy this incredible process that it’s been.'” The original Night Court did often bring back its colorful guest stars for return appearances, and Nayyar hopes Martini follows in that tradition: “I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I would happily go back.”
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Poor Howard
I feel like this show might finally be finding itself. Or I’m finally getting used to it.
OF COURSE they did the obligatory hacky “haven’t we met before?” moment. But it had no payoff. It had no joke. It had no nothing. But “the actors were together on another show, so we HAAAAVE to include that line -just for the sake of having that line and no other purpose.”