the rarely seen but often heard Mrs. Wolowitz, Howard’s commanding and domineering mother (with whom Howard lives until he moves in with Bernadette).
“I never impersonated her voice on set, so they wouldn’t have known,” Rauch explained in Jessica Radloff’s 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” where she and other cast and crew members from the show opened up about Susi, her distinctive voice, and how Rauch’s Bernadette ended up using the same voice to speak to Howard in moments of extreme duress. “I would have been afraid to insult her. But honestly, I didn’t know that I could do it until I gave it a try when I saw it in the script.” Rauch’s husband Winston once heard her practicing it in their kitchen and frantically ran in thinking she was hurt, because he could hear her screaming in the voice. “And since we shared a pretty thin wall with our neighbors at the apartment we were living in, I realized I had to practice any Mrs. Wolowitz lines alone in my car so I didn’t alarm anyone else going forward!”
“Melissa was amazing at it! It reminds him of his mother, which is weird and funny and understandable,” writer and executive producer Steve Molaro recalled. “Howard’s basically going to marry his mother.”
Rauch came up with her own incredibly specific voice for Bernadette, and all of this helped the character transform throughout the show. “Over time, we made Bernadette somewhat nefarious,” co-creator Chuck Lorre told Radloff. “She was a cutthroat corporate character. You didn’t mess with her.” Lorre noted that her voice was “a wonderful instrument,” describing the sound of it like “a piccolo on acid.” He continued:
And then, she’s tiny. So those two things juxtaposed with this balls-to-the-wall killer woman who doesn’t even think twice about cutting some moral corners to get things done … it was joyful to watch. The character became so much more than what was originally created.”
Part of that transformation is, frankly, the fact that Bernadette starts (unconsciously, in the narrative) mimicking Susi’s voice as Mrs. Wolowitz … so Molaro is right in that Howard basically marries his mom.
