Big Bang Theory co-creator issues complaint with show after ‘missing’ Penny detail

The Big Bang Theory co-creator has issued a personal complaint about the original failure of Kaley Cuoco’s character Penny.

In a new podcast, Chuck Lorre has been reflecting on the long-running CBS show, which generated hit spin-off Young Sheldon, and opened up about “missing” what would go on to make Penny such a beloved character.

Originally, in an unaired pilot considered was so “s***ty” Lorre was permitted to have a “do-over”, Penny was Katie, whom Cuoco previously described as “a dark, brooding unhappy woman” – worlds away from the Penny that would make it onto the show.

Lorre changed Penny’s character entirely in the second pilot script, following which he cast Cuoco, who had lost the role of Katie to Amanda Walsh.

But still, not all was right with Penny’s character. Lorre has admitted, upon re-watching the series, that she was depicted too much as a “goofy blonde who says foolish things”.

Speaking on The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast, Lorre said: “It’s a clichéd character – the dumb blonde – and we missed it.

“We didn’t have that right away that what she brought to this story, this series, to these other characters, was an intelligence that they didn’t have. A kind of intelligence that was alien to them, an intelligence about people and relationships and family.”

He continued: “Even after the second pilot, 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.”

One thing Lorre and his collaborator Bill Prady did realise, though, is that Penny needed warmth to make the show work.

“The magic of Kaley was, Kaley’s character — as we figured this thing out on the fly — was amused by Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki), was not critical. If she got angry, it wasn’t harsh. The audience really responded to that.

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“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.”

Penny ultimately “brought a humanity” to her fellow characters “that they were lacking” – something Lorre said it “took a while to figure out”.

“Certainly, in the beginning she was sadly one-dimensional in many ways, but the gift of a TV series that starts working is you get time to learn.”

Cuoco once reflected on her casting on the show in a behind-the-scenes featurette, stating: “Chuck called a year later and, ‘It’s a new character, we want you to come in.’ I read for it and it just felt so much better than it did the year before. I guess it was just meant to be.”

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Cuoco played Penny in all 12 seasons ofThe Big Bang Theory, alongside Parsons and Galecki, from 2007 to 2019.