Parsons & Cuoco BTS Drama Will Change How You See TBBT's Finale
The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series by Jessica Radloff is a best-selling book about TBBT, released in October 2022.
Based on near-academic research and numerous interviews, it offers a wealth of information about the show’s history and events behind its scenes. And it even allows us to see some parts of it in a new light. Such as its finale.
One can argue that by Season 12 TBBT had already been dragging on and stretching its plot thin.
Nonetheless, it is now known that the show concluded with Season 12 rather than continuing for at least one more season, as Jim Parsons, the actor who played Sheldon Cooper, had grown weary of the role. Continuing the series without him was clearly impossible.
And, unfortunately, Parsons told the producers about his desire to leave the show following the conclusion of Season 12 only after the first table read for the season (i.e., after the initial script was written). So the revelation was quite a shock for the rest of the cast, and drove a number of people to tears.
Kaley Cuoco was hit particularly hard by the news.
“The shock of ‘Oh my God, what is next?’ was scary,” she recalled for the book. “We cried for hours… We thought we were going to do another year, so all of a sudden your life kind of flashes before your eyes. I looked at Chuck and said, ‘What are we going to do?’ I couldn’t breathe. It just felt like a death.”
Though the people involved did not reveal this drama to the world until their interviews with Jessica Radloff, for a time Cuoco was understandably angry at Parsons. At first she was just barely able to make eye contact with him. But whether due to her sense of responsibility, or due to the old friendship between TBBT’s actors, she managed to overcome her resentment.
During the filming of the final season, they were able to interact professionally on the set, and now they remain on good terms.
And knowledge of this conflict, might change the way you see the final scene between Sheldon and Penny on the show. In that scene, Penny comforts Sheldon, who is upset by the shakeup that his life underwent once he won his Nobel Prize. Not only do we have an obvious parallel with the life changes that the actors themselves were about to go through. Penny offering emotional support to her friend almost looks like the actor offering a hand of reconciliation through the means of her character.