During the era of early ’90s alternative rock, music videos shifted from the glamorous and glossy confections of the ’80s to something decidedly more low-key and unpolished, and no video embodies this better than Blind Melon’s “No Rain.” The charming 1993 video famously featured an awkward, bespectacled young girl tap-dancing while wearing a homemade bee costume, and the combination of the quirky video and poignant yet catchy song made it an MTV staple.
“No Rain” became Blind Melon’s best-known song, and the “Bee Girl” was a popular pop culture figure of the era. Over 30 years after the video debuted, it’s still hard not to shed a tear at the end, when the Bee Girl goes from being laughed at and misunderstood to finally finding a group of like-minded folks dancing happily in bee costumes of their own.
Read on to learn how the actress who played the Bee Girl, Heather DeLoach, got her signature music video role and what she’s been up to since then.
The origin of Blind Melon’s Bee Girl
The Bee Girl made her first appearance on the cover of Blind Melon’s self-titled 1992 debut album, which featured “No Rain.” Surprisingly, the picture on the cover was taken well before the music video was created, as it was actually a family photo of drummer Glen Graham’s sister, Georgia, performing at a school dance recital circa 1976. As frontman Shannon Hoon (who tragically died of an overdose at just 28 in 1995) said in Rolling Stone, “We were all sitting around in the living room and that picture just jumped out at us. Someone jokingly said, ‘That would make a great album cover.’”
The original Bee Girl made such a good album cover that Blind Melon decided they wanted to feature her in the video, so they put out a casting call to find a girl who could channel young Georgia Graham in all her nerdy glory. DeLoach was just 10 years old when she was cast, and had previously appeared in a number of commercials.
Heather DeLoach (no relation to Hallmark star Nikki DeLoach) was the very first girl to audition for the role, and she nailed it, remembering, “They told me [director Sam Bayer] didn’t look at any other tapes. I went in with my hair in braids and wearing those chunky glasses, because they said to look nerdy. My mom said we had to find some glasses before we went in, so we ran to a local mall right before the audition and bought them, and Sam liked them so much they’re the same ones I used in the video.”
The “No Rain” video catapulted DeLoach to stardom, even though people didn’t know her name. Initially, she was skeptical about being in the video, saying, “My friends can’t believe I would wear that bee outfit. I was embarrassed, but I didn’t think about it,” but it became a point of pride once she saw how popular the video became, and soon enough she was performing at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards and signing autographs for adoring fans.
What happened to Heather DeLoach after the ‘No Rain’ video?
DeLoach reprised her Bee Girl role for Weird Al Yankovic’s 1993 music video for “Bedrock Anthem,” in which she got pushed off the stage by the parody musician’s guitarist. That year, she also appeared in two episodes of the show Phenom.
DeLoach then had small roles in the 1994 films I’ll Do Anything and Camp Nowhere. Her most memorable film role came when she played a shy boarding school classmate of the protagonist in the 1995 adaptation of The Little Princess. After that, she appeared in a 1996 episode of Tracey Ullman’s sketch comedy series Tracey Takes On . . . and played the daughter of an Eastern European dictator in the 1997 Fran Drescher vehicle and box-office bomb The Beautician and the Beast.
In 1999, DeLoach had a minor role in the coming-of-age film Anywhere But Here. She continued acting into the aughts, with appearances in two episodes of ER in 2003 and a bit part in the 2007 comedy Balls of Fury. Her final role was another bit part in a 2008 episode of Reno 911! In 2003, one of Blind Melon’s contemporaries, Pearl Jam, penned a song about her, titled (what else?) “Bee Girl.”
What Heather DeLoach says about playing the ‘Bee Girl’
DeLoach has maintained fond feelings for her defining role, and in a 2008 MTV interview, she said, “When people see my resume, they’re like, ‘Really?’ ‘You’ve grown to be such a beautiful woman!’ Sometimes I don’t always want to be known as the nerdy Bee Girl, but it changed my life, and I’m willing to be called that forever, until I’m old and gray. The Bee Girl is such a part of me . . . I could never let it go.”
She also revealed that she frequently got recognized on the street, and had emotional encounters with fans, even years after playing the Bee Girl, telling MTV, “People come up to me all the time with stories about how I changed their childhood and got them through a tough time of not being accepted . . . It’s not just a video or a song; it’s something that was meaningful to a lot of people.”
Where is Heather DeLoach now?
Today, Heather DeLoach is mostly out of the spotlight, though she maintains Facebook and Instagram pages dedicated to her time as the Bee Girl. The former actress married financial advisor Matthew Greiner in 2017. At the time of her marriage, DeLoach was working for a fertility doctor in California, and the now 42-year-old and her husband have a daughter and two sons.
In 2020, DeLoach made a brief return to the screen to reprise her Bee Girl role on an episode of the game show I Can See Your Voice (unfortunately, the celebrity panelists didn’t recognize her), but since then, she’s been embracing mom life, telling People, “I am so very blessed that I get to be a stay-at-home mom these days and focus on my family and raising my three beautiful children. Entertainment has always been a huge passion of mine, but since becoming a mother, this has become my life’s greatest passion and purpose and I am loving every moment.”
DeLoach even included bee-themed flourishes at her wedding, and when her daughter was born, she said, “We received so many fun bee gifts for her, from costumes to burp clothes to little blankets with bees all over them. I can’t wait to share the video with her when she gets older. And, of course, we will have to dress her for Halloween one year as the Bee Girl.” Three decades later, it’s clear that DeLoach still wears the Bee Girl title with pride.
