Every actor has a process when it comes to learning their lines and performing their roles — and apparently, on “The Big Bang Theory,” Kaley Cuoco had a particularly interesting process. Specifically, her time as the show’s original female lead Penny was basically effortless, and it drove some of her co-stars and colleagues crazy (in the nicest way possible) — and she potentially came to set armed with a photographic memory.
Cuoco and her co-stars never specifically tell Jessica Radloff — who wrote the 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series” — that Cuoco has an eidetic memory, but it’s certainly implied by the fact that the people who worked with Cuoco say she barely even touched her script. As the show’s creator Chuck Lorre put it, “Kaley would do a cold read and knock it out of the park. She was flying by the seat of her pants, but she never rested on her laurels. She was always working. She made it look easy, which is part of the genius. That’s when you know there’s a lot of work going on.”
Former Warner Bros. president Peter Roth, who was incredibly involved in “The Big Bang Theory” and often spent time on set, agreed. “At every table read I sat across from Jim [Parsons, who played Sheldon Cooper] and Kaley,” he recalled. “I remember going up to Kaley and saying, ‘When you get the scripts, you must spend a good deal of time rereading them and highlighting them,’ and she said, ‘No, I never read them.’ I said, ‘Wait a second, are you telling me these are cold reads?!’ and she said, ‘Yeah, it’s just something I do.’ I swear, if you saw Kaley Cuoco at those table reads, it was perfection. Her timing was so impeccable.”
Kaley Cuoco’s Co-Stars On The Big Bang Theory Were Blown Away By Her Ability To Memorize Scripts
One can imagine that watching Kaley Cuoco effortlessly sail through dense, dialogue-heavy scenes on “The Big Bang Theory” was potentially frustrating, particularly because her character didn’t have to spout scientific facts very often. Even when the writers tricked her by doing just that, though, she nailed it, according to her co-star, on-screen boyfriend turned husband, and one-time real-life boyfriend Johnny Galecki (who played Leonard Hofstadter on the series). Galecki also said their colleague Simon Helberg, who played Howard Wolowitz, was mystified by Cuoco’s process.
“Oh f***, it was so annoying,” Galecki said to Jessica Radloff. “I remember there was a speech the writers wrote as a dare for her that was at least a full page, if not more, and it was all physics jargon and she just nailed it. As Simon once said, she doesn’t even open a script, just puts her hand on top of it and by osmosis absorbs it, and it’s amazing.”
Perhaps the craziest part of Galecki’s recollection, though, is whatever was going on at Cuoco’s house. “I would go over to her house and walk through the gate, and there would be three feet of scripts piled so high from production assistants that had thrown them over the gate,” Galecki revealed. “And she never opened them! I mean, months’ worth of scripts laying in her yard. And yet she always knew her lines. I would study those lines so much. Whatever Kaley’s process is, or sometimes lack thereof, she knows exactly what will make things shine and pop, just by her own instincts. She’s an anomaly.”
According To Kaley Cuoco Herself, She Felt So Linked To Her Character That Learning Lines As Penny Was Easy
As far as Kaley Cuoco is concerned, the whole thing is pretty funny — which makes sense considering that she apparently barely had to prepare for her scenes — even though she also said Chuck Lorre is still dubious about the whole thing. “Chuck still doesn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t prepare for our table reads,” Cuoco said in Jessica Radloff’s book. “I even said to him once, ‘I’m sorry, you think after I shoot on Tuesday nights I go home and rehearse Wednesday’s script?’ He’s like, ‘Yes, I do think that?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s not the case, I hate to tell you!'”
Realistically, though, Cuoco said that she went through so many rehearsals as Penny that it was just easy to learn the dialogue — and that she felt really connected to her character. “The detailed version is that our scripts wouldn’t change a ton from the time we got to them to when we shot the episode, so we would rehearse as the week went on, and then block on Monday, and it would just seep into my memory from all of that,” Cuoco said. “Also, I knew Penny so well, I knew what she was going to say before I read it. I was just myself in Penny, and she was a piece of me.”
“The Big Bang Theory,” including Cuoco’s masterful performance as Penny, is on Max now.
