The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/277771
20 Spring 2014 was already the class clown by the time she reached third grade, and her report card showed it, a reproving "N.I." (needs improvement) written under the "Behavior" category. She was always "chit-chatting," complained stern Miss Sullivan. But when the time came to put on the Christ- mas play, "The Elves and the Shoemaker," Pi- mental found her loquaciousness rewarded. Miss Sullivan, handing out parts for the play, looked at the chatty child and said, "You like to talk, so you can be Mrs. Shoemaker." A back- handed compliment, perhaps, but it got her her frst stage role. Throughout high school, Pimental dreamed of a career in show busi- ness, but had no idea how to go about it. By the time she was a se- nior, her acting resume consisted of a few parts in school plays and one at an all-girls camp, but, by and large, she continued to hide her lamp under the proverbial bushel. She remembers sitting with her mother in the guidance counselor's offce. "We were dis- cussing college and what my future held, and I said in a tiny little voice that 'I'd love to go to Hollywood and acting school.' My mother just gave me a look." And that's how Pi- mental ended up studying chemical engi- neering at WPI. "At the time I didn't have the confdence to pursue my dream," she says. But that would change. Pimental grew up in Somerset, Mass., where her single mother worked hard to keep Nancy and her brother out of trouble. Mrs. Pimental was strict. Nancy wasn't allowed to date during high school, and was even forbidden from attending the prom. "I had a sheltered upbringing in a lot of ways," she says. But not wholly. Pimental's mother was quite happy to take her children to R-rated movies. "The ticket person would say, 'This is R-rated,' and my mother's big joke would be, 'I don't let them drink or smoke, but I do take them to R-rated movies.'" The family also watched a lot of television, and even attended live entertainment on occasion. "We watched Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, All in the Family. I knew every episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We watched The Love Boat, Fan- tasy Island. When I was 12 my mother took me to see Joan Rivers. I remember there were what sounded like gunshots outside the theatre, this was in Providence, Rhode Island, and Joan just worked it into her act seamlessly, saying, 'Oh, my boyfriend must be waiting for me outside.'" Pimental loved Rivers' sense of humor. She re- members seeing her in the Billy Crystal movie Rabbit Test, in which Rivers played a nurse carry- ing a liver in the kind of cardboard con- tainer you might get in a fast food restaurant. When she dropped the liver, looked around to see if any- one had noticed, then popped the organ back into its box like a waitress who has dropped some- body's meal order, Pimental cracked up. "Joan Rivers was a big comedic infuence on me," she says. Chemistry to Comedy WPI turned out to the perfect ft for Pimental. She had always enjoyed science, particularly chemistry, and she learned a lot about herself at the school. "I got confdence from WPI," she says. "College was my rebirth. There was an at- titude there that I appreciated, as if we were the cream of the crop. There were only 34 people in my chemical engineering graduating class, and we thought of it as the hardest discipline." She recalls former WPI professor Al Sacco, chemical engineer and astronaut, with a lot of fondness. "He was good to me, he got me," she says. Her confdence in her public persona grew also during her undergraduate career. She gave a speech during student orientation and was told that she had something special. While at acting school, Pimental supported herself by driving tour buses around Boston, narrating the city's history in her own unique way. This was also a confdence-booster. "I didn't even know how to drive when I got the job," she says, "and at frst it was really hard, driving and N WPI_spring14_features1.indd 20 3/9/14 12:11 PM