Everyone Hated This Big Bang Theory Plot (Especially Kaley Cuoco)

In the eighth season of “The Big Bang Theory,” Kaley Cuoco, who landed the lead role of Penny after another actress played the female lead in the show’s unaired pilot, ends up landing a “major” acting job, but it is also a total disaster. Cuoco apparently hated him… as did her co-star Johnny Galecki (who played her former boyfriend-turned-husband Leonard Hofstadter) and the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre.

Early in her acting career in Los Angeles, before the show’s narrative even begins, Penny appears in an obviously terrible, low-budget horror film called “Serial Ape-ist” and is understandably embarrassed by the whole thing. the matter. Then, in the show’s seventh season, “Star Trek” veteran Wil Wheaton, who plays himself on the show and appears regularly as Sheldon Cooper’s (Jim Parsons) chief enemy, tries to convince Penny to to star in a sequel with him. , titled “Serial Ape-ist 2: Monkey See, Monkey Kill.” Penny doesn’t want to but needs the money, so she says yes; In the end, she is fired, which is a huge relief. According to Jessica Radloff’s book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” Cuoco was miserable while filming those scenes, and Galecki knew it.

“Kaley didn’t like that story,” Galecki recalled. “When I saw that the sequel was in the script, I was like, Oh, fuck. But I wanted to support Kaley because she was going to have a hard time those days. I wasn’t happy.” Cuoco hated that to perform the episodes she also had to be covered in hair from head to toe. “I was like, ‘Really, guys? This is what’s going on?’ And Chuck thought it was so funny. He loved it and I never understood why.”

Although Kaley Cuoco seemed convinced that creator Chuck Lorre was married to the whole “Serial Ape-ist” plot, he apparently wasn’t thrilled with it and believes the show could have done a better job of creating fake acting jobs for A penny to take.

“Actually, I don’t remember loving it,” Lorre reflected. “We wanted Penny to have a little success in her dream of being a successful actress, but it’s not my favorite episode.” Lorre expressed that the show-within-the-show scenes were difficult, but that the goal was really to show Penny trying to make something work that was meant to be terrible. In fact, Lorre believes he did a better job addressing the problems of actors on a TV show posing as aspiring actors in a later series, the Netflix original series “The Kominsky Method.”

“Actually, it kind of fits with what became part of ‘The Kominsky Method,’ which was that I didn’t want to make fun of acting,” Lorre said, acknowledging that he did making fun of Penny and her dreams of becoming an actress on “The Big Bang Theory.” Luckily, he changed course for his Netflix project. “I didn’t want to make fun of poorly written or poorly performed plays or shows. At ‘Kominsky’ the students are mostly good,” Lorre explained. “They have gifts. They are not horrible actors who don’t know they are horrible. That, for me, has already been done. And I didn’t want to do it. I find it more interesting to see someone who is good.” for what they are doing, fighting.

Here’s the good news: Chuck Lorre did Give Kaley Cuoco the chance to let Penny shine as an actress on “The Big Bang Theory,” specifically in the season 6 episode “The Monster Isolation.” In that installment, Leonard drags an unwilling Sheldon to see Penny perform as Blanche DuBois in a small production of the famous play “A Streetcar Named Desire”… and Sheldon realizes that Penny is incredibly talented, praising her the entire trip to his and Leonard’s house. “I loved when Penny showed that she was actually a good actress when she was in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,'” Cuoco told Jessica Radloff in the book. “When we did the table read for that episode, Chuck took me aside and said, ‘You know, I want it to be good. I want Penny to be a good actress.’ I said, ‘Really?!'”

Another aspect of Penny’s journey that Cuoco also loved was, surprisingly, the fact that Penny eventually stops acting and uses those skills in a totally different field. Because? She thought it was more realistic than a plot where Penny booked a Marvel movie or something. Towards the end of the series, Penny joins her friend Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz in the pharmaceutical industry, where she is successful, and Cuoco felt that all of Penny’s years as an aspiring actress made sense for her character’s journey.

“I liked that it was so realistic,” Cuoco revealed. “There are so many people who want to be actors and they’re pretty good. And that’s the most heartbreaking thing because she was really good. And her realization that this is the dream she’s had for so long, but she also wants to get married and make money from it. true… a lot of people face that.” He continued, “And in many ways, Penny was using her acting skills in those pharmacy meetings, as well as memorizing all the details of those medications. That helped her succeed, and I loved that.” The reality is that not every talented actor gets the chance to land a big movie, and keeping Penny’s story realistic is half the fun.

“The Big Bang Theory” is now streaming on Max.