You might think you’ve heard a few solid theatergoing stories, but you’d be wrong. Mayim Bialik has one of the all-time best stories about attending a live stage production — and it’s absolutely mortifying.
“I have a very bad story about a musical,” the “Jeopardy!” host and “Big Bang Theory” alum told James Corden on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.” “I saw ‘Rent.’ I was friends with Neil Patrick Harris — this is a terrible story (laughs). I went to see ‘Rent,’ I mean this was a long time ago, I was a teenager, and it wasn’t my thing. But when your friend is in the play and then everybody is clapping at the end, and you say to your boyfriend next to you, ‘I don’t want to stand for this.’ And then you look up and Neil Patrick Harris is looking right at you, it’s a bad day.”
The “Call Me Kat” star said she was clearly alone in her belief that this 1997 touring company production of “Rent,” in which “Doogie Howser” alum Neil Patrick Harris played struggling documentary filmmaker Mark Cohen, was not worthy of her rising to her feet to offer up a round of serious applause.
“Standing ovation, because everybody loves ‘Rent’ and Neil Patrick Harris was in it,” Bialik continued. “We were teenagers, it was right after he finished ‘Doogie Howser.’ And Neil was fantastic. I mean, he’s amazing. But I just wasn’t into the, ‘Let’s give a standing ovation!’ It wasn’t my thing.
“But that’s the time when you don’t say it out loud, because Neil was reading my lips and when I went backstage to say hi to him, we were friends at the time, he said, I kid you not, ‘Why did you say you weren’t going to stand up?’ He read my lips! I did not have a good answer,” she said.
Bialik said that this incident led to friction between the two actors, who were both child stars growing up, him on “Doogie” and her on “Blossom.”
“It was terrible. It was bad… It was many years ago. We didn’t speak for a long time,” Bialik said.
But all is well that ends well, and Bialik said NPH has let it go now.
“He says that he forgave me,” she said. “He sent me flowers when he heard about that I’m still carrying this terrible — I mean, I felt terrible. It just wasn’t my thing!”
Watch Bialik explain it all to Corden in the video above.