The Big Bang Theory co-creator Chuck Lorre revealed his big regret over how he first depicted Kaley Cuoco’s aspiring actress character Penny, who never even got a last name until she married neighbor Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) in season nine of the hit CBS sitcom.
‘We had so many episodes to go before we started to understand that there was a brilliance to Penny’s character that we had not explored,’ the 72-year-old showrunner told The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast on Monday.
‘We did the very cliché in the beginning, you know, goofy blonde who says foolish things. It’s a clichéd character, right? And we missed it. We didn’t have that right away that what she brought to this series, to these other characters, was an intelligence that was alien to them, you know, intelligence about people and relationships and family.’
Chuck continued: ‘It was built in that the scientists of the show didn’t understand how to be with people. She did. She brought a humanity to them that they were lacking and that took a while to figure out. Certainly in the beginning, she was a sadly one-dimensional.’
Way before the 39-year-old California blonde was cast in 2007, Lorre (born Charles Levine) had cast MuchMusic VJ Amanda Walsh to play Katie, ‘a street-hardened tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior’ in the 2006 unaired original pilot.
Unfortunately for the Canadian 43-year-old, the test audience ‘hated’ Katie and her ‘toxic presence’ so the entire pilot was retooled and reshot the next year with new characters Penny, Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), and Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar).
‘The magic of Kaley was, Kaley’s character — as we figured this thing out on the fly — was amused by them, was not critical,’ the Emmy Hall of Famer recalled.
‘If she got angry, it wasn’t harsh. The audience really responded to that.’
Former Warner Bros. Television Group chairman Peter Roth agreed, saying: ‘She was never judgmental about these characters. She was bemused by them. In fact, they brought more judgement to her than she did ever of them.
‘And I thought that was also an important difference between the character of what Penny brought versus the character of what Katie brought in the original unaired pilot.’
Kaley and the two other leads – Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki – went from earning $60K per episode in the first season to $1M per episode for season eight as well as a percentage of the critically-acclaimed series’ back-end money.
Cuoco also secretly began dating Johnny for two years until their 2009 split.
On March 30, the three-time Emmy nominee and her fiancé Tom Pelphrey will celebrate the second birthday of their daughter Matilda Carmine Richie Pelphrey.
Kaley and the 42-year-old Outer Range actor – who got engaged on August 14 – originally met at the Manhattan premiere of Netflix’s final season of Ozark back in April 2022.
Here’s hoping their relationship lasts longer than Cuoco’s 21-month marriage to pro tennis player Ryan Sweeting and her three-year marriage to equestrian Karl Cook.
The Norman Productions founder currently executive produces and voices the titular bisexual DC Comics character in the 10-episode fifth season of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s adult animated series Harley Quinn, which concludes this Thursday on Max.
Kaley will next executive produce and star as a semi-famous actress who returns to her hometown to work in regional theatre in HBO pilot Kansas City Star created by Hacks’ Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky – according to Deadline.
The Big Bang Theory also spawned CBS’ pre-quel spin-off Young Sheldon that aired for seven seasons spanning 2017–2024, as well as an upcoming Max spin-off starring plasma physicist Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie).
