A version of the following article appeared in the September 14, 2026, edition of The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
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Before his Emmy nomination, Jim Rash was Snoopy at Charlotte Latin; Betty Chafin Rash reflects on stepson’s accomplishments
by Lindsey Banks
Before Jim Rash became an Oscar-winning screenwriter — who’s also up for an Emmy tonight for his film “Miss You, Love You” — he was Snoopy at Charlotte Latin School.
Rash, a Charlotte native, played the title role in “Snoopy: The Musical” at Charlotte Latin. Years later, he told arts critic Lawrence Toppman in an interview for The Charlotte Observer that he was “the worst Snoopy possible.” Rash also acted as a child in plays at Camp Thunderbird, a YMCA camp at Lake Wylie, Toppman reported.
But Rash’s stepmother remembers it a little differently.
“I think that was the first time we realized that he really had a flair for acting,” Betty Chafin Rash told The Ledger in an interview last week. (Chafin Rash has Charlotte roots herself. She was first elected to Charlotte City Council in 1975, is the third woman to have served on the council and is the first woman mayor pro tem.)
After the performance, she recalled, children in the audience — some dressed in their pajamas — lined up to get Snoopy’s autograph.
Rash, 55, also attended Irwin Elementary, First Ward Elementary and Alexander Graham Middle School, before graduating from Charlotte Latin in 1989. Chafin Rash told The Ledger that when Jim was trying to get into UNC Chapel Hill, his father, Dennis, had connections at the university and heard a less-than-glowing assessment of his son’s prospects: “His grades are pretty good, but he just can’t write.”
Jim Rash (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)
Rash did an extra year of schooling at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey before getting in and graduating from Chapel Hill. He then headed to Los Angeles, joined the improv and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings, and built an acting career, most commonly known for his role as Dean Craig Pelton in the NBC sitcom “Community.”
In 2012, Rash won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Descendants” alongside Nat Faxon and Alexander Payne. In 2013, he co-wrote, directed and starred in the coming-of-age comedy “The Way Way Back,” featuring Steve Carell, which received Critics' Choice nominations.
Now, his HBO film “Miss You, Love You,” which he wrote and directed, is nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie. The film stars Allison Janney as a widow preparing for her husband’s funeral and Andrew Rannells as the assistant sent by her estranged son to help her.
The story has roots in Rash’s own family and the death of his father and Betty’s husband, who had Parkinson’s disease. Rash has said he drew from his experience surrounding his father’s funeral and his sister, Mebane, CEO of EdNC, who brought her assistant with her to help organize the funeral. Betty says that’s the extent of the film’s similarities to real events.
Betty was with Jim and Mebane in Chautauqua, N.Y., when he learned the news about his Emmy nomination. (Betty spends her summers in Chautauqua, a town and lake resort community in southwestern New York, and Jim and Mebane were visiting.)
“You can imagine a picture of the three of us,” she recalled. “Well, particularly Mebane and I, jumping up and down, and the cute smile on his face, and you know it's kind of like a dream come true.”
She’ll watch the Emmys tonight from her home in Charlotte with friends.
“I'm so proud of him,” she said. “I wish his dad were still alive to see all these wonderful things that have happened to him.”