The Sweetest Thing TBBT Cast Did for Melissa Rauch & Mayim Bialik

The last season of the cult sitcom The Big Bang Theory aired more than four years ago, but fans still can't get over it. What makes this project so special is not only the hilarious story and lovable characters, but also the cast's heartwarming friendships that formed over the course of the series' 12-season run.

In Hollywood's money-driven environment, it is not uncommon for actors and producers to get too self-absorbed and pay little attention to the needs of others. However, these attitudes depend on a person and their priorities. The main original cast of TBBT proved their hearts were in the right place when they sacrificed their own financial prosperity to support two of their colleagues, Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik.

Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar played the original protagonists starting from the first season of TBBT. While their salaries were not huge at the start, the five cast members earned an insane $1 million per episode by the sitcom's finale.

In Season 3, the lead actors were joined by two more cast members, Melissa Rauch and Mayim Bialik, whose characters soon became integral to the TBBT story. But despite their crucial roles, the actresses were paid less than the original cast members, and even by the end of Season 10, their per-episode salary was only $200,000.

By that time, all the actors had already become friends and thought it was unfair that two of them were underpaid. The original five stars decided to cut their own salaries by $100,000 for the remaining two seasons of TBBT, freeing up $500,000 for the per-episode budget. As a result, Rauch and Bialik's salaries were raised to $450,000, which means they received a total of $21 million each for the remaining 48 episodes.

It's worth noting that the TBBT cast was not the first to sacrifice their salaries for fellow actors. In Season 2 of Friends, the salaries of David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston skyrocketed, but the stars thought it was unfair and negotiated to achieve equal salaries for all cast members. Aniston and Schwimmer succeeded and were paid the same per-episode salary as the rest of Friends' cast starting from Season 3.