There’s a moment in the 2016 film “The Bronze” wherein gymnast Hope Ann Greggory (Melissa Rauch) chastises young colleague Maggie Townsend (Hayley Lu Richardson) for spitting out her gum in the street. “You crap on this town, I crap on you,” Hope growls. It’s a moment that comes midway through the movie after the audience has watched Greggory be a fairly terrible person: breaking into her postal worker father’s mail truck to steal money, crushing up Adderall to snort it, and berating everyone she encounters. But there’s a line for Hope, and it’s found in her love for her hometown of Amherst, where the people revere her for being the winner of a bronze medal at the Olympics more than 20 years ago.
Hope Ann Greggory is one of many female antiheroes in film, a grand tradition that includes Thelma and Louise, Lisbeth Salander, and, most recently, “Send Help”’s Linda Liddle. “That is something that has always been appealing about the antiheroine is [she’s] like, ‘Here I am, take it or fucking leave it,’ and I think that’s refreshing,” Rauch tells RogerEbert.com today. In a landscape where women are so often codified as either the saint or the bitch, a female antihero is one who understands the world is rigged and fights against it. She’s not cute and cuddly, but understands that’s what people want women to be.
Hope Ann Greggory is certainly not cute or cuddly, but she knows that’s a major part of being in gymnastics. A scene where she teaches Maggie how to be “judge bait,” and get high points during a floorwork routine, sees Hope slap on a fake smile and sell herself as an overly positive person. “I’ve never had so much fun bouncing,” Hope says, pretending this is the funnest thing she’s ever done in her life because the judges will eat it up. Later, she and Maggie pose on their stomachs, acting as cutesy as can be for each fictional judge while Hope declares, “Commercials. Endorsements. Fuckton of free shit!” Part of Hope’s antipathy is the falsity that comes from the sport. At the end of the day, it’s not about athletic ability, but how darling and, ultimately, likable the gymnast is.
When reflecting back on “The Bronze” ten years later, Rauch is happy the movie’s found its people, and admits there was concern that Hope was too unlikeable a character. “I remember being asked a lot, ‘Why is she bad?’” she said. “And I’m like, I don’t really think that the antiheroine is bad. I think it’s just finally allowing them to be human… I wanted people to say she’s unlikable. She’s petty and afraid, and competitive and insecure, and she’s grieving her past self, and those are all human emotions. If she’s unlikable, then aren’t we all unlikable?”
Rauch herself is so bubbly and happy that it’s a testament to her talent that she plays Hope Ann Greggory so well. The phrase “labor of love” gets overused these days, but, for Rauch, the movie truly was. Co-written with her husband, Winston, the movie started as an idea when Rauch was working on “The Big Bang Theory.” But acting is feast or famine, and while Rauch was finding success, it was in fits and starts. “I was literally at the unemployment office the week before I got The Big Bang,” she said. Much like Hope, Rauch returned to her New Jersey hometown and found that her TV appearances would garner her a free pretzel at the mall. But she couldn’t ignore people asking, “What are you doing now? Are you gonna pack it in? Are you done yet?”
She wanted to tell a story about celebrity and how fame alters someone at a young age, and how that changes you once you age out into adulthood. Rauch jokes that, as a kid, when her friends played house, she was always the baby because she was shorter than everyone. Conceiving the character of Hope was an opportunity to write a complex, hard-R character that she wasn’t being offered at the time. “I was really looking to write myself a role that I wouldn’t necessarily have been given,” she said. “I’ve always used writing as a way to write me opportunities, and so in thinking about this story that we wanted to tell those ideas came together… because it would be something different from what I had been doing.”
The actual filming of the movie was nothing short of an Olympic event, with the Rauches putting everything on their credit card until the first day of filming. “Everyone got paid from our credit cards because we didn’t know if the financing was going to come through,” she said. “I had that summer to shoot it before I needed to get back to work [on “The Big Bang Theory”], and we didn’t have the funding. We were like, ‘well, everyone’s here in Ohio ready to shoot for 21 days. Let’s do it.’ We white-knuckled it and, thankfully, it worked out.”
Hope’s journey is motivated by money and spite. She believes she’ll receive an inheritance from her former coach (now dead) if she trains Maggie and gets her to the Olympics. Because of her jealousy of Maggie’s talent, Hope initially tries to sabotage the young competitor by having her gain weight and become distracted. She eventually relents and becomes her actual coach, fearing she’ll lose the money but also seeing an opportunity for redemption. She also wants to get one over on rival coach Lance Tucker (Sebastian Stan), who believes Hope stole his glory when her brave performance while injured became the story, overshadowing his silver medal. “They’re both assholes,” says Rauch. “But Hope is based in a humanity that, if we look past the unlikability factor, we all can relate to it. … What’s so great about Sebastian is he has this innate charm that you’re pulled into. But the difference is that Lance is truly out to get people in a way that is so self-serving and more ego-driven than Hope.”
Rauch and crew do have ideas for a sequel and would love to see Hope return. “It’s sort of a dream in my mind,” she says. And, honestly, Hope Ann Greggory would certainly fit in in this world. It’s ironic that the character debuted the year Trump was elected, and it would certainly be intriguing to see how she lives in a world where patriotism is weaponized; she does spend nearly the entirety of the first movie in a star-spangled tracksuit. Regardless, it’d be great to see another unrepentant antiheroine again. The world needs Hope Ann Greggory, and as more people discover “The Bronze,” let’s hope it doesn’t take years for us to see her return.
“The Bronze” is currently available on VOD.