“The actual Beverly Goldberg is on Twitter and if you are inclined, I recommend you follow her,” she continued. “She’s interacting, posting pictures and answering questions. And she really was a substitute teacher at her kids’ school! That was her way of saying, ‘My kids are growing up. I have to build my own life so let me sub at their school.’ That way she could always hover and it’s hilarious; in fact, it’s genius.”
According to the actress, while there are both good and bad points to being a “smother” no amount of coddling your child is going to prevent the inevitable. “I don’t have kids, so this is all very new to me,” she said. “But my theory is, you’re going to screw your kids up. You’re just going to. In hindsight it’s always, ‘That book said to do this and I should have done it, but I didn’t.’ I watch my friends with kids and sometimes the kids will say the shadiest, snottiest things to them. I can’t imagine loving someone so much that I would allow that!”
However, the onscreen, often contentious, family dynamics her character navigates in every episode aren’t too far removed from those of her own teenage years – when, she said, she made her mother’s life hell. It’s those tumultuous teens that she now credits for understanding how to love a child unconditionally. “I’m really feeling what my mother went through,” she laughed. “Yes, I do make a lot of apologies now. When I think back on some of the awful things I said to my mother, what a little bitch I was and now I really feel awful. Although, I have to say a lot of times I feel I was being pre-accused of things I wasn’t doing. Sometimes parents do provoke and Beverly is one to provoke.
“But when your kid is about to run into the middle of the street, don’t reason with them -- just pull them back!” she exclaimed. “You do what you have to do to protect them. I get that now. When your kids are adolescents all they want to do is slam doors or cry, and they take everything so personally. I think I cried for about four years straight as a teen because of hormones and [the fact that] I was never going to go out with John Taylor or Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran. We were never going to go on a roller coaster together!”
It matters not what family discord might lay at the foundation of a Goldbergs storyline; clever writing always ensures the show nails the heart and soul of what it is to be family, ending with a heartfelt resolution. It’s those moments Wendi cites as personal favorites. “When I watch the episodes I’m just as surprised as everyone else,” she admitted. “When I see the footage at the end where they seem to really justify something [that’s happened] … To me it’s great because there are times your kids can be brats. But what are you going to do? You’re their parents. You love them. They’re just going through something and you can’t punish them for every little thing because life can be terrible as it is. There’s nothing worse than having a face full of zits and having to go to school.”