Who Did Octavia Spencer Play On The Big Bang Theory?

Those who converse with Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) on the CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" usually find him a nuisance. This is especially true of actor Octavia Spencer's character, a DMV clerk credited as Octavia.

In Season 2, Episode 5, "The Euclid Alternative," Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Howard (Simon Helberg), and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) agree that they are no longer willing to have Sheldon as their passenger, so they tell him he needs to get a license. Despite his initial hesitation, he eventually stops by the Department of Motor Vehicles to get his learner's permit, although he soon becomes a source of irritation for Octavia by voicing his concerns regarding the questions on the test.

Although Octavia repeatedly makes it clear that she does not care about his objections, Sheldon explains that the first question is impossible to solve since a car length is not a standardized measurement and that the correct answer to the second question isn't given as an option. Out of pure frustration, Octavia just gives him his learner's permit even though he does not have the chance to take the test. When he continues to voice his concerns about the questions, Octavia lets him know she has had enough by saying, "Don't make me climb over this counter."

Octavia Spencer, who later shared the screen with Jim Parsons in the films "Hidden Figures" and "A Kid Like Jake," acknowledged that she once portrayed a minor "Big Bang Theory" character in a 2018 interview with Entertainment Tonight, joking that she would act on the CBS sitcom again if she were paid the same as Parsons while conceding that it would never happen.

While promoting "A Kid Like Jake" on "The IMDb Studio at Sundance" at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Spencer mentioned that she already knew Parsons because of her time working on "The Big Bang Theory" and "Hidden Figures," in which Spencer portrays real-life NASA mathematician and supervisor Dorothy Vaughan (for which she was nominated for an Oscar for best performance by an actress in a supporting role) and Parsons plays fictional Space Task Group head engineer Paul Stafford.