Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler, played by Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik, had plenty of ups and downs on “The Big Bang Theory” — and in one particular episode, the reaction from the live studio audience was so wild that Parsons had trouble doing his job. So what scene had the audience hooting and, perhaps, even hollering?
In Jessica Radloff’s 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” Parsons, Bialik, and the show’s creator Chuck Lorre all weighed in on an infamous scene from the season 6 episode “The Fish Guts Displacement,” in which Amy comes down with a nasty cold and Sheldon is forced to take care of her. After Amy convinces the typically touch-averse Sheldon to help her (he even applies Vicks Vaporub to her chest), Amy keeps pretending she’s sick to get favors out of Sheldon, at which point he spanks her. Sheldon thinks this is a punishment, but Amy does not.
“I’ll never forget the spanking because I couldn’t do it without laughing,” Parsons recalled in the book, saying that, like Sheldon, he was misled at the moment. “I couldn’t do it! And they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to have your face on camera. It will be on Mayim and her enjoying getting spanked.'” Parsons said that when it came to actually shooting the scene, he found out he was going to be on camera, which infuriated him. “I was spitting nails, I was so mad at these people for putting me on camera,” he explained. “And, I couldn’t quit laughing, which was only making me more mad because I suddenly couldn’t do my job.” Parsons struggled to even tell the story without laughing even after all these years.
“Mayim would just go, ‘Oh! Oh!’ making these sexual, sort of awkward, genius-sounding noises. So between her doing that and the audience reacting, I couldn’t hold it together. I felt like the moment could never be as good as it could have been in some ways because I never thought I’d have to do it on camera. It’s just stupid looking back, what a weird job.”
At the last minute, this risqué moment on The Big Bang Theory was filmed in front of a live audience
The shadiest part of this entire situation — without question — is that neither Mayim Bialik nor Jim Parsons knew that they’d do the full spanking thing in front of a live studio audience. For Bialik, this was pretty bad, largely because she’s pretty sure her parents were at that particular taping. “It was a completely off-camera thing when we rehearsed it all week,” Bialik recalled. “And I was very relieved because doing that in front of people is so awkward. I think my mom might have been there, as well as my dad. All I know is we did it off camera through rehearsal, producer’s run through, and then at the taping, Chuck [Lorre] said, ‘Let’s do it on camera.'”
From Lorre’s point of view, he didn’t really see the problem — but also acknowledges that the entire situation was so ridiculous that he doesn’t even remember what else happened in the episode itself. “I probably figured there was no harm in shooting it so that we could have a choice in the editing room,” Lorre told Radloff. “Or I might have been thinking, This is hilarious! Why wouldn’t we want to see this?! But I do remember thinking, How far can we go with this? At what point do we run from this or embrace it? I couldn’t tell you anything else that happened in that episode other than that scene and trying to be very careful about making sure that we weren’t being offensive or crossing a line with these characters.”
Mayim Bialik knows that this scene in The Big Bang Theory was meme-d to death
So how did this scene come about, and why did they decide, in the moment, to shoot the spanking in front of a live studio audience? Director Mark Cendrowksi spoke to Jessica Radloff for the book and unpacked how it all went down. “It was kind of written as Sheldon saying he’s going to spank Amy and then we cut to her face, and you would just see his hand coming through the background, and her reactions. But when we put it on camera in the run through, the anticipation of Sheldon saying “Well, I’m just going to have to spank you” was just too funny. Just seeing it on camera, Chuck and Steve [Molaro, a writer and producer] and everybody were like, ‘No, you gotta do it. It’s too funny not to.’ Jim and Mayim could not believe they were doing this, but they were so funny together. And the audience went nuts.”
Mayim Bialik has gone on record to say that she doesn’t like watching any episodes of “The Big Bang Theory,” so what does she think about this one … and the fact that it apparently became a meme? “I don’t think about the faces I am making in such moments, but people always ask me about my reactions. I’m like, It’s just my face! That’s just what my face does when I’m acting! I don’t know!” Bialik also said that when she sees clips of the scene, she ends up criticizing her performance and appearance. “I was supposed to look bad because Amy was sick, but there’s still a vanity to me as an actor even though my character is so unadorned,” she explained. “And then it became a meme, and it’s something people talk about! And when I think about my kids and how they might see that? Oh my gosh, the worst!”
