Popular sitcoms don’t earn that moniker by having underwhelming or unlikable casts — and clearly, the five original leads of “The Big Bang Theory” helped catapult Chuck Lorre’s CBS comedy to unbelievable success. According to an oral history of the series, though, Kunal Nayyar, who played Raj Koothrappalli for the entire show, was essentially fired by network executives before they started shooting … and Lorre had to go to bat for the actor.
In “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series” by Jessica Radloff, Lorre recalled that he flew from Los Angeles to New York for upfronts only to discover that Nayyar was nowhere to be found. At that point, Lorre says that, in the middle of his cross-country flight, a higher-up at CBS decided that Nayyar just wasn’t the right choice and that they’d find someone else to play Raj.
“Well, I did not respond well,” Lorre said. “I was furious. They made this decision without consulting me. […] I called the execs at CBS and said, ‘You can’t fire him. I cast him. I believe in him, I’ll take responsibility for this decision. He’s my guy.’ If I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail on my own choices. I’m not going to fail on someone else’s choices I wasn’t about to recast that part because someone else made a decision.”
Chuck Lorre fought for Kunal Nayyar to remain on The Big Bang Theory – and won
Johnny Galecki, who also spoke to Jessica Radloff for the book, said that the entire vibe was thrown off at upfronts due to both Kunal Nayyar’s absence and the apparent fracas over potentially replacing him. “It felt very odd that we were missing a cast member at the upfronts,” Galecki remembered, speaking for fellow castmates Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and Simon Helberg. “We all felt terribly awkward and frustrated and helpless because we didn’t know what that meant for the show. But mostly we were really feeling for Kunal.”
As for Chuck Lorre, he reached out to a “distraught” Nayyar and reassured him that he was still a part of “The Big Bang Theory” — and, in his recollection, said that he felt responsible for the conditions that led to CBS asking for a new Raj Koothrappalli. “I told him not to worry about it, we would get this figured out,” Lorre said of his conversation with Nayyar before admitting that he and the show’s creative team were struggling with Raj’s character. “We had a better handle on Sheldon and Leonard and Wolowitz, and so if anything, Kunal suffered not from his own inabilities, but from ours. We had to discover his character. And we did. Beyond our wildest dreams. He became a great, wonderful voice of the ensemble. You can’t imagine the show without him.”
Kunal Nayyar had an extremely emotional reaction when he booked The Big Bang Theory
As for Kunal Nayyar himself, he was devastated at the idea that he might lose “The Big Bang Theory,” but was reassured that Chuck Lorre had his back. Ultimately, it all worked out. As Nayyar told Jessica Radloff, he doesn’t know what exactly Lorre did, but at the end of June 2007, he was getting ready to move apartments when his agent called and said he was officially a part of “The Big Bang Theory” — which prompted a swell of emotions. “And I remember falling on the floor in my apartment on my knees and weeping. Just weeping. Because it had been almost forty-five days of not knowing. And that’s a very difficult place to be in.”
“Looking back, it’s not personal,” Nayyar said of the whole situation; clearly, time and distance have given him some serious perspective on the entire ordeal. He also feels grateful that someone as experienced and respected as Lorre had his back during a stressful time: “I was a kid out of graduate school. From the prospect of a network about to invest in whatever they’re about to invest into a project, I have no experience and they only know me from this one audition. Would you take a chance on me? To me, it was just another thing that I had to prove myself. But Chuck fought for me. He believed in me.”
Playing Raj on The Big Bang Theory changed Kunal Nayyar’s career – but was it worth it?
Okay, yes — in a larger sense, playing Raj Koothrappalli on “The Big Bang Theory” was worth it for Kunal Nayyar, who earned a ton of money for the role (He’s also probably still raking in cash from syndication when you consider that TBS is basically “The Big Bang Theory Channel” for anyone who still has cable). That said, let’s take a look at Raj — because despite Chuck Lorre’s insistence that they “figured out” what to do with the character, it doesn’t always feel like it. When the series starts, Raj is just one of the four main nerdy guys, but he has the strangest and most unsettling quirk of any of them: he has selective mutism, and he can only speak to members of the opposite sex while he’s extremely drunk. That characteristic ebbs and flows throughout the show — he’s eventually able to open his mouth and say words in the presence of Kaley Cuoco’s Penny, for instance — but it’s a really uncomfortable trait.
Then there’s Raj’s ending. As everyone else ends “The Big Bang Theory” married, with children, expecting children, or winning Nobel Prizes, Raj’s story just … ends. He’s single, despite being the show’s resident hopeless romantic, and his solo ending is played more for laughs than anything else. Raj and Nayyar both deserved better from the show, but it doesn’t seem like the actor has any hard feelings.
