When The Big Bang Theory premiered in 2007, few could have envisioned how successful the show would go on to become. After twelve seasons and hundreds of episodes, the show ended in 2019. Central to the story was the genius mind of Sheldon Lee Cooper (Jim Parsons) and the character’s ability to perfectly blend humor and science. The Big Bang Theory has since gone on to become an Emmy-nominated series, and creator, Chuck Lorre, has recently opened up about why he resisted giving Parsons’ Sheldon a love interest for so long in the series.
Lorre, while speaking on the inaugural episode of The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast, alongside former Warner Bros. Television Group chairman Peter Roth and host Jessica Radloff, the series creator, admitted that it took him a while to fully understand that Parsons’ character was asexual. “I didn’t understand that going in when we did the pilot. And what was wonderful about making that move was: here was a character whose entire love and passion was for science,” he said. As evidenced in multiple episodes of the show, Sheldon’s whole existence revolved around science, and it was the uniqueness of this character that stayed Lorre’s hand with regard to introducing a love interest. His comments read:
“He had no predilection towards one thing or the other. He loved and used every moment of his conscious wakening to chase the secrets of the universe. And that made him a remarkable character, I think, to opt out. And I don’t think there’d ever been a character, certainly in a television comedy, that opted out. I thought we had a unique character in that his passion lay elsewhere. You’ve stumbled into something unique and special, why wouldn’t you protect it?”
Sheldon Lee Cooper Could Have Been Very Different in ‘The Big Bang Theory’
From the very onset of the show, Sheldon’s fellow scientists, like roommate Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), and Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), all shared an attraction for women. This was not the case for Sheldon, but Roth reveals that the show’s original unaired pilot leaned a different way. “In the first pilot we discover that Sheldon has a predilection for women with big buttocks and we discover that he has had coitus. None of that exists in the second pilot,” Roth explained during the same conversation. “That shift and change into the more innocent quality of that character was extraordinarily wise, and it made a very big difference.”
Ultimately, the show did introduce a love interest for Sheldon with the arrival of Mayim Bialik’s Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. The pair endured a prolonged will-they-won’t-they, before finally ending up together and eventually having coitus. The Big Bang Theory has since spurned two spinoffs, in Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage. In the first prequel show, Young Sheldon, it is revealed that Sheldon and Amy do eventually have children as well. The Big Bang Theory is poised for yet another spinoff, and one that will bring back Sheldon’s arch-nemesis, Barry Kripke.
