By Nina StarnerDec. 13, 2024 7:00 pm EST
In season 8 of "The Big Bang Theory," Kaley Cuoco — who earned the lead role of Penny after a different actress played the female lead in the show's unaired pilot — ends up getting a "major" acting job, but it's also a total disaster. Apparently, Cuoco hated it … as did her co-star Johnny Galecki (who played her erstwhile boyfriend turned husband Leonard Hofstadter) and the show's creator Chuck Lorre.
Early in her career as an actress in Los Angeles — before the show's narrative even begins — Penny appears in an obviously terrible, low-budget horror flick called "Serial Ape-ist" and is understandably embarrassed by the whole thing. Then, in the show's seventh season, "Star Trek" veteran Wil Wheaton — who plays himself on the show, appearing semi-regularly as a major nemesis for Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) — tries to convince Penny to star in a sequel with him, titled "Serial Ape-ist 2: Monkey See, Monkey Kill." Penny doesn't want to but needs the money, so she says yes; ultimately, she gets fired, which comes as a huge relief. According to Jessica Radloff's book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," Cuoco was miserable while filming those scenes, and Galecki knew it.
"Kaley did not like that storyline," Galecki recalled. "When I saw that the sequel was in the script, I was like, Oh f**k. But I wanted to support Kaley because she would struggle through those days. She was not happy." Cuoco hated that performing the episodes also required her to be covered in hair from head to toe. "I was like, 'Really, you guys? This is what's happening?' And Chuck just thought it was so funny. He loved it. I never understood why."
Kaley Cuoco thought Chuck Lorre loved the Serial Ape-ist storyline, but he didn't
Even though Kaley Cuoco seemed convinced that creator Chuck Lorre was married to the whole "Serial Ape-ist" plotline, he apparently wasn't wild about it — and thinks the show could have done a better job of coming up with fake acting jobs for Penny to take.
"I actually don't recall loving it," Lorre mused. "We wanted Penny to have some small success in her dream of being a successful actor, but it's not my favorite episode." Lorre expressed that the show-within-a-show scenes were tough, but that the goal really was to show Penny trying to make something work that was destined to be terrible. In fact, Lorre thinks that he did a better job of tackling the issues of actors on a TV show pretending to be aspiring actors on a later series, the Netflix original series "The Kominsky Method."
"It actually kind of plays into what became part of 'The Kominsky Method,' which is I didn't want to make fun of acting," Lorre said, recognizing that he did make fun of Penny and her dreams of becoming an actor on "The Big Bang Theory." Luckily, he changed course for his Netflix project. "I didn't want to make fun of badly written, badly acted plays or shows. In 'Kominsky' the students, for the most part, are good," Lorre explained. "They have chops. They are not horrible actors who don't know they're horrible. That, to me, has been done. And I didn't want to do it. I find it more interesting to see somebody who is good at what they're doing, struggling."
Penny eventually quits acting — but Kaley Cuoco likes that ending
Here's the good news: Chuck Lorre did give Kaley Cuoco a chance to let Penny shine as an actress on "The Big Bang Theory," specifically in the season 6 episode "The Monster Isolation." In that installment, Leonard drags an unwilling Sheldon to see Penny perform as Blanche DuBois in a small production of the famous play "A Streetcar Named Desire" … and Sheldon realizes Penny is incredibly talented, raving about her for his and Leonard's entire journey home. "I did love when Penny got to show that she was actually a good actress when she performed in 'A Streetcar Named Desire,'" Cuoco told Jessica Radloff in the book. "When we did the table read for that episode, Chuck pulled me aside to say, 'You know, I want it to be good. I want Penny to be a good actress.' I said, 'Really?!'"
Another aspect of Penny's journey that Cuoco actually did love as well was, surprisingly, the fact that Penny eventually quits acting and puts those skills to use in a totally different field. Why? She thought it was more realistic than a plotline where Penny booked a Marvel movie or something. Towards the end of the series, Penny joins her friend Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz in the pharmaceutical industry, where she succeeds — and Cuoco felt like all of Penny's years as an aspiring actor made sense for her character's journey.
"I liked that it was as realistic as it was," Cuoco revealed. "So many people are out there who want to be actors, and who are quite good. And that's what is most heartbreaking about it because she was actually good. And her realization that this is that dream she's had for so long, but she also wants to get married and make real money … a lot of people deal with that." She continued, "And in many ways, Penny was using her acting skills in those pharmaceutical meetings, along with memorizing all the details of those drugs. It helped make her successful, and I loved that." The reality is that not every talented actor gets the chance to land a huge movie, and keeping Penny's story realistic is half the fun.
"The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on Max now.
