She said, “I have an idea. Supposing they wear dog masks, and I lead them in on leashes.” So I knew immediately that she did not want to compete with these two very lovely women. And that never happened—we would not allow that, the dog masks.
What I said to her was, “Raquel, your character is too strong. You don’t need to have them in dog masks or leashes. All you need to do is snap your fingers. Those girls will drop to their knees.” And she said, “Oh, I like that.”
At one point, Robin was trying to talk around her idea about it not being good for them to come in first. And Robin was trying to explain it to her. Pam was standing there, and Pam said, “You know, Raquel, he’s right.” And Raquel said, “Honey, please.” And she stepped in front of Pam, blocking her, then went on to talk to Robin. Pam made a fist and made believe she was hitting [Raquel] in the back of the head, and walked away.
[After that], Pam would do that every time she came on stage. She’d sneak up behind Raquel, and make believe she was punching her in the head.
Also, she had her future husband there: Andre, a French director. He would stand behind me while I would talk to her, and I would see her look over my shoulder [to see him say] yes or no. She got me so angry. [At one point], I gave her a note: “Raquel, I need you stand a little closer to Robin for the two-shot.” She said, “OK.” And then I said, “That note I gave you is probably the most brilliant note a director has ever given an actress.” And she said, “What are you talking about?” And I said, “I know it’s brilliant, because Andre agreed with me.”
David Misch:
There was a scene which was incorporated into the original script, where Raquel Welch was to torture Mr. Williams. But the “joke” was that all her tortures were sexy. So the idea was that there was going to be a hot tub, and she was going to torture him by rubbing him. And you know, most of the show was set [based on the freelancer’s original script]. The hot tub was there. We [already] had it, it had to be used. We had no way to not do that scene. So we tried to write it funny, and I think we did.
But my main memory of that scene was not our hilarious lines, but that after the scene was over, everyone was [supposed] to get out of the hot tub and to move on to the next scene. And Robin said, “I’m afraid I’m not going to be getting out of the hot tub.” Because he had, uh, a piece of physical anatomy that had gotten not appropriate for the audience to see at that point. Raquel Welch had been rubbing him all over.
