The Big Bang Theory co-creator Chuck Lorre has revealed the beloved sitcom almost got scrapped before making it on air.
Chuck Lorre has admitted his first Big Bang Theory pilot “stunk”.
The 74-year-old producer created the iconic sitcom after being the mastermind behind the likes of Mike and Molly and Two And A Half Men, and while The Big Bang Theory became a global hit, things nearly took a very different turn.
He told Extra: “The first pilot we shot, it failed. It wasn’t terribly good and CBS said, ‘Would you be willing to try it again?’
“They weren’t clear on why it didn’t work. The script stunk, the script we wrote. It wasn’t very good.
“A year later, to put it all together, we shot a second pilot, and that became The Big Bang Theory as we know it.”
The beloved sitcom starred Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter, Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz, Kunal Nayyar as Raj Koothrappali, and Kaley Cuoco as Leonard and Sheldon’s neighbour Penny.
The pilot is available to watch online, with Penny actually called Katie with a much crueller persona, played by Amanda Walsh.
In 2022, co-creator Bill Prady told Entertainment Weekly: “In the first pilot, the female character (who, at that point, was named Katie) is kind of rough.
“She’s dangerous in a way and wasn’t very nice to the guys. I remember going to the test screening, the dial testing.”
Co-creator Chuck admitted that “the audience hated her”, while Bill recalled how much the audience “were defending Leonard and Sheldon”.
He noted that Amanda did “a great job playing that character”, but the audiences weren’t happy with “a toxic presence”, which led to a re-write as Katie became Penny.
Chuck added: “I told Bill, ‘Let’s add more of these brilliant misbegotten characters, and let’s lose the plot entirely.
“Let’s just spend a half hour diving into the lives of these brilliant misfit characters.'”
The pilot, which didn’t include Howard or Raj as characters, also featured a very different take on Sheldon.
Jim Parsons had actually auditioned for Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, and the original Sheldon had some similarities with that character.
Simon Helberg told the Dinner’s On Me podcast: “Well, they reshot the pilot. So the pilot I was in was the reshot one.
“They shot a very strange, macabre version of it, where [Jim Parsons’ Sheldon] was like a womanizer. Very strange.
“Like, a guy drinking beer — kind of like the Neil Patrick Harris character, I think. Very different.”
Chuck Lorre admits very first Big Bang Theory pilot ‘stunk’: ‘It wasn’t very good’
