‘The Big Bang Theory’ Book Revelations: Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki’s Romance in Their Own Words and More

Credit: Michael Yarish/CBS

'The Big Bang Theory' Book Revelations: Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki's Romance in Their Own Words and More

It all started with a bang! The Big Bang Theory not only transformed the lives of its stars — including Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik — but it also made a deep impact on its viewers, who propelled the CBS hit to a rare 12-season run, making it one of the longest-running sitcoms in television history. In her book The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series — out on Tuesday, October 11 — journalist Jessica Radloff lets dedicated Big Bang fans in on all of the behind-the-scenes secrets, weaving the story via interviews with the entire cast, its guest stars, the series’ creators, show runners, writers and even the sitcom’s prop master (who was responsible for all of the guys’ delicious-looking Chinese food). Intertwined with iconic anecdotes, the cast and crew’s takes on various fan theories and more, at the heart of the Big Bang Theory tome is the commentary on the characters’ relationships — and the real-life relationships that formed between the cast members. [jwplayer 4XWMSGXL-zhNYySv2] Cuoco and Galecki — who not only portrayed onscreen fan-favorite couple Leonard and Penny, but also dated IRL for nearly two years during the beginning of the show’s run — recalled the many facets of their relationship, from how they told the rest of the Big Bang family that they were dating to the reason for their breakup. The former couple, who have remained close since their 2009 split, also looked back fondly on the beginnings of their romance — or at least, how the Flight Attendant star attempted to not-so-subtly hit on the Roseanne alum. Recalling an early weekend getaway with the cast, Cuoco revealed in the Big Bang book that she tried to get Galecki to come into her hotel room to kill a bug for her. “I was like, ‘Ooh, this could be a good way to get him in there!’ But that didn’t work,” she laughed. “I couldn’t believe he turned me down. I still think he turned me down because he knew what I was doing. I used the bug as an excuse, and he still did not come over.” The National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation star, for his part, bantered seamlessly with his ex in the book. “Well, I’m not that easy, Kaley. I’m not just a piece of meat. There’s a heart in here. There’s real blood that pumps through my veins, believe it or not. I have feelings. At least take me to dinner and a show first!” he joked, adding, “Bug in her room. Jeez.” Keep scrolling to see 15 of the revelations from The Big Bang Theory book:

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Is Sheldon on the Autism Spectrum?

Throughout the series run, many fans have identified with Parsons’ iconic character — and many believe he’s on the autism spectrum. “We did not want to put a label on Sheldon, because with that comes a responsibility of authenticity … which should be respected,” series creator Chuck Lorre explained in Radloff’s book. “I think not having a label gave Jim a great deal of more freedom to play the part as he wanted to play it, as opposed to how we might have been pressured to do for a very-real syndrome that can be difficult.”

Parsons, for his part, added, “I really took it as the writers wanting to celebrate and utilize certain aspects of someone on the spectrum, but were not interested in carrying the responsibility they would feel. I mean, just getting the science right was enough of a responsibility. But looking at where we are today in the world, would you have needed to then find somebody on the spectrum to play that part? Now, that being said, who’s to say I’m not on the spectrum in some way?” the actor shared. “I’m not saying I am, but it’s called the spectrum for a reason — I just may not be at a notable point on it! I don’t know. That’s the whole point in some ways. But at the time, the more I read up on Asperger’s, I was like, Well, the writers can say no, but Sheldon sure has a lot of the same traits.”

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Sheldon's Sexuality

The subject of Sheldon’s sexuality is also a common topic among viewers.

“I had, for several years, championed the idea that Sheldon was asexual. He had no interest, which I thought made him remarkable,” Lorre revealed in the book, adding, “Sheldon just didn’t care [about girls]. He was not attracted to anybody. He was attracted to science. There was kind of a sense that we had our own lane; that no one else was doing this.”

The Two and a Half Men creator continued: “Sheldon was complete without a relationship. And that broke ground a little bit, along with the fact that he could articulate those wishes. He was not unconsciously avoiding contact with people. He looked at it, he analyzed it, and said, ‘I want no part of this.’ Science was his mistress."

As for the character’s eventual relationship with Amy (Bialik), Parsons noted, “I as easily accepted his asexuality as I eventually did his odd sexuality once Amy was on.”


Lorre noted, “[When we] … eventually did enter Sheldon into a relationship … we did it very slowly, and in a way that made us feel like we hadn’t done a 90-degree turn at all.”

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How Kaley & Johnny 1st Started Flirting Off-Screen

“We would finish rehearsal and Kaley would just take off,” Galecki recalled. “She was the youngest — and beautiful, of course — and would just get into her cool car and peel out.” That all changed, however, when he invited her to Montecito for a weekend of board games with the rest of their male costars — coincidentally, the same weekend she had just split from her boyfriend at the time.

“I went down to the front desk and got her a cabin, which ended up being the cabin next to mine. By the time she showed up it was pretty late, and I had gone to bed. And then I got a call. It was Kaley. She said, ‘There’s a bug in my room.’ I was like, “Yeah, probably. You’re in a cabin.” She said, ‘You have to come and kill it.’ I said, ‘I’m not doing that,’” the Conners alum recalled, revealing he “was thinking, ‘Is this your way of inviting me into your hotel room basically?’ Which she later admitted it was. That was her way of flirting that night.”

He continued, “It’s such a funny story to me now and shows how clever and adorable Kaley is. You see it in her work now as a producer; she has a way of making what she wants to happen, happen. And then at a certain point, it was also what I wanted to happen. But at that point it felt a little bit premature, especially from someone who was literally jilted from a relationship four hours earlier.”

Cuoco, for her part, chimed in, “There was definitely a bug in my room and I was flirting with him! So both were true! I was like, Ooh, this could be a good way to get him in there! But that didn’t work. I couldn’t believe he turned me down. I still think he turned me down because he knew what I was doing. I used the bug as an excuse, and he still did not come over.”

Galecki — proving that the two still can banter just as easily years later — replied, “Well, I’m not that easy, Kaley. I’m not just a piece of meat. There’s a heart in here. There’s real blood that pumps through my veins, believe it or not. I have feelings. At least take me to dinner and a show first! Bug in her room. Jeez.”

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How the Cast and Crew Found Out Kaley and Johnny Were Dating

“We all had different hotel rooms at Comic-Con. There were two giant buildings for this one hotel and Johnny and I weren’t even in the same building. So we were like little mice in the night, running back and forth to each other’s rooms, trying not to be noticed,” Cuoco said, laughing. “I mean, who did we think we were?”

Galecki noted, “And it was still so new that we hadn’t told the rest of the cast that we were dating yet, and here they were our closest friends. So we would all be in the hotel lobby, and Kaley and I would give each other a hug and pretend to say good night, and go our separate ways.”

Lorre, however, eventually found out while trying to make awkward small talk with the 8 Simple Rules alum one day. “This is charming looking back, but I was on a shuttle bus with the cast and I was sitting next to Kaley trying to strike up a conversation. The best I could come up with was, ‘So ... what’s going on with you? You got a fella? You seeing anybody?’ Like, I’m her dad or something,” he remembered. “And she starts giggling and says, ‘Oh my God, you don’t know?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know what? What don’t I know?’ And she says, ‘I’m seeing Johnny.’”

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Kaley and Johnny's Breakup

“We just had very different interests in what I think we wanted from our experience of life. It’s not to say that I don’t like very nice things, but we just had different interests,” the Entourage alum shared. “But I adore the friends that we are. I think I might value my relationship with her more than any other previous relationship or relationship afterwards. Even for her to say, 'A lot of these stories for this book have to do with Johnny, so let’s get him on our Zoom,' … I mean, that’s awesome. We just have such a bond that I appreciate so much. And I think that’s part of our great friendship.”

From Cuoco’s perspective, “Johnny and I also ran out of things to talk about, because we’d be at work all day, and then we’d go back to one of our places together, and say, ‘So how was your day? Simon was funny today, right?’ And we’d laugh because we had no mystery.”

Still, the actress cherishes their time together just as much as Galecki does. “We were together for a long time. We really adored each other, and we were lucky because as our breakup was happening, there was no foul play, there was nothing bad about our relationship … it just ended. Yes, there was some hurt there for a bit, but it didn’t take us that long to go back to what we were before we were dating and be friends. … We’ve been so supportive of each other ever since. We adore each other.”

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Comic-Con 2008

Comic-Con 2008 was the first moment that the cast and crew got to see the reach of their show.

“We were in a shuttle bus headed to the hotel when we learned that people had camped out overnight,” Galecki recalled, while Cuoco added, “We saw a line of people for miles. I said, ‘Oh my God! I wonder what that line is for?’ And our driver says, ‘It’s for you! It’s for The Big Bang Theory!’ We thought, 'No, you have that wrong.'”

Lorre remembered, “There were thousands of people in this convention center room. It was standing room only! And when the cast walked out on the stage, they went berserk! It was like the Beatles.”

Nayyar, who played fan-favorite Raj for the duration of the show, said he was “in absolute awe” of the fan reaction at the time. “There were so many people screaming that you could actually feel the vibration of energy on your skin. It was just a jaw-dropping experience, like I was living someone else’s reality, not mine. And yet, there I was. It was really amazing.”

Helberg, who played the lovable Howard throughout the series, stated, “People were dressed like us and grabbing us. It was very sweaty, and very loving. I guess that goes together. Passion. Passionate love.”

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How Penny & Leonard's Breakup Mirrored Kaley & Johnny's

Though no one around them knew it just yet, Cuoco and Galecki had called it quits in 2009 — right before their characters did, too.

“Too many things felt oddly similar! I used to think there were cameras in our houses since things felt eerily close to home,” the actress recalled about reading the scripts for their split scenes. 


Galecki, for his part, was initially worried how the two were going to handle their professional relationship after their personal breakup. “I remember so vividly sitting in my dressing room reading a book when I was told Kaley and I would be interviewing each other for a special feature on the season three DVDs. I don’t think it had even been a week since we had broken up, and I was like, ‘Oh f—k, are you kidding me? Nobody knew we had broken up. So we went downstairs and cracked each other up so much to the point she nearly peed her pants, she laughed so hard,” he shared. “I walked out of the interview, and thought, OK, we’re going to be all right. It was a really beautiful moment, a definite turning point.”

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The Scene Kaley Hated

“The worst experience was filming ‘Serial Apeist’ and getting covered in f—king hair from head to toe. I was like, ‘Really, you guys? This is what’s happening?’ And Chuck [Lorre] just thought it was so funny. He loved it. I never understood why,” the actress shared.

“Kaley did not like that storyline,” Galecki added. “When I saw that the sequel was in the script I was like, ‘Oh f—k,’” he laughed. “But I wanted to support Kaley because she would struggle through those days. She was not happy.”

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Amy and Sheldon’s 1st Kiss

“I was sick with something, like a bad respiratory cold. And it was ironic because I always took care of myself, and here I am sick during one of the very rare times I have to kiss her. And kiss her several times because I knew we’d have to do several takes. I was like, This is unbelievable! I felt bad about it, I really did,” the Hollywood alum shared in the book, praising his costar: “Mayim is always very game and never one to worry about those things too much, although she did have some sort of thing that she was gargling every time we did a take.”

The Jeopardy! host, for her part, remembered, “The man was visibly sweating and feverish, so I rinsed with peroxide in between every kiss, every scene, every take, so that I wouldn’t get sick. It’s such a great scene, and it turned out so great, but it was a really hard night. … To think of all the work that went into it, I’m so glad it was so sweet. I really loved it. Oh, and I did not get sick.”

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'Star Wars' Guest Stars

Parsons couldn’t believe he was acting alongside the legendary James Earl Jones when the actor guest-starred on the show. “I knew [James Earl Jones], obviously, as the voice of Darth Vader, and CNN. But more than that, I knew of him from his long legacy of the highest art of acting ... this inspirational orb of valiant actors that are floating out there, where you’re like, ‘One day I hope I get to be an orb like that.’ So there was something unsettling about the fact that he was there on our set in a weird way to me! And he was so kind! And so game to play! But it was that weird feeling of, ‘Are you sure you want to play with me? I don’t know if this is the right fit for you. It’s not because you’re not doing it well; it’s me! I blame myself!’” he joked in the book. “It’s really psychotic,’ I mean, I really should have seen a therapist over an episode like that. It’s just crazy. We were in towels in the steam room together! I was shirtless with James Earl Jones!”

He was in even more shock when the two got to work with Carrie Fisher. “That was [exhales] insane,” Parsons remembered. “I really admire her. She was much smaller than I thought she’d be. I was like, “You’re so tiny!” She’s adorable! She was really adorable.”

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The Chinese Food

The Big Bang Theory’s prop master, Scott London, dished on all the Chinese food Sheldon and Leonard would order.

“The Chinese food pretty much got made on the day, so it was always super fresh. I used to make the rice in my prop room. I’d use Minute brown rice, add water, a little bit of sriracha, quite a bit of soy sauce to give it flavor, which would turn it more into fried rice, and then I’d put the vegetable mix with carrots and peas in it after it was cooked,” the crew member recalled. “The vegetables were usually frozen when I put them in there, but the heat from the rice alone would heat it up. I had it down to an art. One time we were coming back for a new season, and Johnny was on a soup kick for a long time, because he loved this vegetarian wonton soup, but mostly it was just broth with the sriracha sauce. I’d also chop green onions and scallions in there just to give it a little color and flavor, and we’d keep it in a thermos to stay warm. But on one of our first shows back, I got a little overzealous with the sriracha, and right in the middle of a scene he started gagging. Whoops.”

Credit: Warner Bros. TV/Youtube

Amy and Sheldon’s 1st Time

“I love this notion of consent, and this was one of the really sweet aspects of Amy and Sheldon’s relationship. Because they communicated so differently than a lot of other people do, there were aspects of their conversation which intuitively made a tremendous amount of sense, being able to say, ‘I’m going to do this. Are you OK with this?’” Bialik said of the writers’ decision to have Sheldon and Amy have “coitus” for the first time. “It’s a really beautiful lesson for all sorts of relationships. I remember hearing from a lot of young people, or parents of young people, about how important it was how Amy and Sheldon dealt with that, and obviously the credit is all to our writers.”

Parsons added: “My very favorite thing so far has been the after-sex scene with Amy and Sheldon. I never had the opportunity to relate to anybody in that kind of way on the show, like a pillow-talk scene. I was like, ‘There’s a whole other way to talk on this show that I didn’t have access to before!’”

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Melissa Rauch Had a Miscarriage While Dealing With Her Own Character’s Pregnancy

Rauch — who portrayed Howard’s wife, Bernadette, throughout the series — opened up about her miscarriage in a 2017 Glamour op-ed, during which she also revealed she was expecting again.

"When I did open up, I was so glad. I was still always scared I would go through a miscarriage again, but by having the article out there, it was like, ‘OK, everyone knows, and it’s OK, and let’s talk about this.’ I’m so glad it freed up on the conversation,” she said in the book, adding that she told her costars and the show runners before the essay was published. “I remember the consensus being, ‘This is the best news you could ever report,’” she recalled. “And they said, “We don’t know what we’ll do with this information, but we’re going to make it work. The most important thing is that you take care of yourself."

Her character, meanwhile, gave birth to the couple’s first child in the December 2016 episode “The Birthday Synchronicity.” They welcomed their second child in “The Neonatal Nomenclature" in March 2018.

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Mark Hamill’s One Regret

Hamill, who guest-starred as himself on the series, revealed in the book that he wished he had seen the series in its entirety before coming on the show.

“I probably only saw 30, 40 episodes when I guest-starred, and I wish I had done this in reverse so I knew more about it when I did it, but I was determined to see all of them,” the Star Wars icon explained. “It took me months and months and months, but I’ve seen them all now. I knew they referenced all kinds of pop culture, and the characters loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, etc., but I had no idea how ingrained it was and how they could be so subversive in their humor.”

He added: “Like, they’re planning a day to watch all the [Star Wars] movies and they said, ‘Well, you know, we’re starting out with Phantom Menace at noon and I’m just wondering if an hour is long enough to schedule for complaints.’ I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a burn! Very clever.’ Once I knew all of this, it would have really changed my experience. I would have talked to them about when they go to Skywalker Ranch, or ['The Opening Night Excitation'] where it opens with the crawl from [Star Wars]. I thought I’d seen plenty when I did my episode, but I became a completist and saw them all. I didn’t really become enamored of it to the degree I had become until I had the experience of being on the show. I became obsessed with it.”

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Sheldon and Penny's Relationship

When discussing Sheldon’s decision to hug Penny — a first for the character, who famously hated touching of any kind — Parsons said, “The construction of the scene was more moving to me than the joyous ecstasy that the character was going through. The emotion I feel even as I talk about it now has to do with the chill it gave me that they put something like that together. This was a character who displayed so few emotions, especially early on, and the writers came up with the most ridiculous trigger for him to finally reveal emotion and to such a degree that he was compelled to hug Penny. It was a wonderful moment to get to do it because we had just enough history and information behind us. We were all very aware of the stakes, and they were not cheaply earned. The episode and that moment hit at the right time in the series for the show.”

Executive producer Steve Holland added, “We found out early on that Sheldon and Penny were a powerhouse combination. There was something very funny and sweet about that relationship. I think some of our best scenes were those two. They were so opposite, and they frustrated each other, but there was this deep, deep love.”