Big Bang Theory Scenes The Actors Had A Hard Time Filming

Acting can be a mentally and physically demanding profession, one that isn't devoid of its fair share of good and bad days. Such was the case for the cast of the popular CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," which ran for 279 episodes spanning 12 years. The show follows the romantic and social misadventures of four scientists and pop culture geeks, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Raj (Kunal Nayyar), and Howard (Simon Helberg), joined by their neighbor Penny (Kaley Cuoco), with later seasons introducing Amy (Mayim Bialik) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch).

Though the cast members became some of the highest-paid television actors ever in the show's later seasons, with Parsons, Cuoco, and Galecki taking home massive paychecks of $1 million each per episode by season 10, that doesn't bar them from the challenges people generally face at their workplaces. However, that does leave some juicy behind-the-scenes deets and intriguing anecdotes for the actors to share with journalists and fans. From having to perform uncomfortable scenes, secret love affairs, and on-set tensions to personal injuries and logistical complications, here are some scenes in "The Big Bang Theory" that gave the actors a hard time during filming.

Penny and Leonard's relationship is a primary romantic focus of "The Big Bang Theory." In the Season 1 episode "The Middle Earth Paradigm," Leonard's crush on Penny reaches its first milestone when an inebriated Penny kisses Leonard for the first time.

In reality, it was Cuoco who had a major crush on Galecki. While the two actors later admitted there was a chemistry they felt together before their relationship, they chose to sideline those feelings in favor of their professional relationship. Obviously, shooting a kissing scene with a crush can get flustering, and the case was no different for Cuoco.

In an excerpt of "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series" published on Vanity Fair, Cuoco said, "I was very nervous with both [the on-screen and real-life first kisses]. I mean, I was kissing [Galecki] as Penny before we ever dated, and it's weird when you have a crush on someone and you're kissing them as actors."

The actors dated each other for two years before amicably breaking up and remaining good friends.

While filming a kissing scene with your crush can be difficult, it comes nowhere close to being as difficult and awkward as shooting multiple intimate scenes with an ex. 

Speaking with Dax Shepard on his "Armchair Expert" podcast, Cuoco talked about how she and Johnny Galecki, who had then just recently broken up, suddenly found themselves shooting a barrage of sex scenes together. The two pulled through not just because of their consummate professionalism but also because they had ended their relationship on good terms and maintained their friendship.

However, Cuoco was convinced that "Big Bang" creator Chuck Lorre added these scenes to mess with the former couple. "When we broke up, obviously it was a little sensitive for a minute, but I remember those weeks that Chuck had written these episodes where all of a sudden our characters were like sleeping together every other second," Cuoco told Shepard.

She continued, "Johnny and I talk about it, and I think [Chuck] did that on purpose just to f*** with us ... Because that came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, these characters were all up on each other."

After 11 seasons of the show's run, Jim Parsons decided to move on from playing Sheldon Cooper. Given that Sheldon is arguably the face of the series, the showrunners decided to make the 12th season the final one. This sent shockwaves not just to the fandom but also to the other cast members — to the extent that Johnny Galecki felt the situation could have been handled differently.

While Kaley Cuoco got emotional after hearing the news, executive producer Steve Holland brought to light how the development affected the dynamic between the cast members — especially Cuoco and Parsons — in "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story."

"Kaley could barely make eye contact with Jim during the run-through," he revealed, continuing, "At the time, there were a lot of hard feelings between Parsons, and Galecki and Cuoco, who weren't privy to everything that had unfolded leading up to the decision to end the show with Season 12, or unaware why they weren't brought into the fold sooner. Understandably, the next day at work — which was a Thursday run-through — was fraught with tension."

In one of the show's most memorable scenes, Sheldon teaches Raj an expanded version of "Rock-Paper-Scissors" named "Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock." In the Season 2 episode "The Lizard-Spock Expansion," Sheldon fluidly explains the entire game in a single go with hand gestures mimicking each variable.

However, the scene took Jim Parsons multiple takes to pull off; the actor struggled to memorize the sequence of the game's rather complicated rules, as seen in the blooper reel. After messing up the first take, Parsons breaks character by exclaiming, "Oh gosh, I messed up!" to which director Mark Cendrowski responds, "It's very simple." Parsons tells him, "It's not as simple as you think, Mark."

When asked by Entertainment Weekly if Parsons was tired of strangers asking to play the game with him, Parsons answered, "I'm not tired at all! Mainly because I can't do it. I think people are tired of me being such a let-down when they want to hear about it or, God forbid, play it. Honestly, that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to memorize. It somehow doesn't compute in my brain. I hate to say that must mean that it doesn't mean anything to me, but I'm afraid that it really doesn't mean very much to me."

As endearing as it is to finally see Sheldon and Amy tie the knot in the "Big Bang Theory" Season 11 finale, "The Bow Tie Asymmetry," shooting the scene brought on a lot of mixed emotions for Mayim Bialik, all of which she detailed in her blog post on Grok Nation.

Bialik talked about her initial fears over whether the script would meet her (and fans') high expectations, her reaction to meeting and performing alongside Mark Hamill, and her discomfort wearing the wedding dress. She said, "As a divorced woman, it's hard to revisit that moment and those decisions. It's still painful to think about putting on the dress you take vows in. The dress that is in every picture of the perfect happy life you think you will have when you're young and getting married."

The actress also recalled how she tried losing weight before shooting the scene, which she initially did, before getting a "series of antibiotic-needing bacterial illnesses," preventing her from being able to work out for a month. Bialik gained her weight back, which made her feel ashamed. "I didn't feel my best. And I felt crummy about it. Even though everyone said I looked beautiful, I didn't feel completely beautiful."

When Bernadette told Howard, "I'm gonna be washing paint out of my Smurf for a month!" she wasn't kidding. For context, in Season 6, Episode 5 — "The Holographic Excitation," Howard and Bernadette dress up as Smurfs for Stuart's Halloween party at his comic book store, painting themselves blue from head to toe.

At a Paley Center for Media convention, Simon Helberg and Melissa Rauch revealed how painstaking and time-consuming it was to remove the paint from their bodies after the shoot. Helberg was done before Rauch, who was aided by her regular makeup artist and two assistants using hot towels to remove the blue paint.

Rauch said, "It was getting late, and I'm starting to fall asleep ... and I lifted my legs up to get the rest of the makeup off and heard the guy laugh and thought, 'Oh, they're just telling jokes' and I looked in the mirror and thought, 'What's that?! Dear lord Jesus, that's my business!' I had totally exposed myself! I put my legs down and just said to them, 'Long night!'" The actress finished the anecdote with, "That is the tale of my Smurfette," garnering laughs from the audience.

Given how emotionally engaging the craft of acting can be, some scenes leave actors changed one way or another, for better or worse. Such was the case for Johnny Galecki while shooting the Season 1 episode "The Middle Earth Paradigm," where Penny hosts a Halloween costume party, inviting Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, Howard, and her hunk of an ex-boyfriend, Kurt (Brian Patrick Wade). After a few condescending exchanges, Kurt humiliates Leonard by picking him up, leaving Leonard upset.

In "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story," Galecki revealed how shooting the scene roused emotional childhood memories for the actor. "Him picking me up as Leonard really affected me to the point where I think I cried after we shot the episode ... It really dug up some old schoolyard stuff for me."

The actor admitted that despite the experience bringing back unpleasant memories, it also drew him closer to Leonard through empathy, helping him play the character for the rest of the show's 12-season run. "I had a way into Leonard and really began to understand him," Galecki said.

In "The Big Bang Theory" Season 6, Howard gets an opportunity from NASA to go to space to install a telescope he invented on the International Space Station. However, much like how Howard faces his share of difficulties in space, shooting the scenes was no easy feat for Simon Helberg.

At a Paley Center for Media panel, Helberg revealed how, despite not shooting in actual space, the crew sold the illusion of the character floating in zero gravity by building a seesaw-like contraption with a bicycle seat in the middle for him to sit on, which was removed from the shots through visual effects. Helberg said, "I was sitting on basically like a bicycle seat. Really, I feel for the cyclists out there, yet I don't feel because it really numbed me below the waist at a certain point ... And then there were some teamster guys — it was like a seesaw — who are lifting me and pulling me. The rest of it was just the body movements of floating."

Unlike Sheldon, who never misses an opportunity to mock Howard, Jim Parsons was quick to give his co-star credit for the performance. "Everything about [Helberg's] 'antigravity movement,' if that's what it's called, was completely him. Absolutely astounding," he said, with the other cast members agreeing.

In the Season 10 episode "The Hot Tub Contamination," Raj and Stuart (Kevin Sussman) invite themselves over to Howard and Bernadette's house to use their hot tub, only to realize the couple never left for their Palm Springs vacation. While the two characters are shown to find the hot tub very relaxing, it was the complete opposite for the actors shooting the scene.

Kunal Nayyar revealed at the show's San Diego Comic-Con 2017 panel that the tub wasn't as clean as one would hope when hopping in for the scene. "It was a little disgusting ... the hot tub was slightly dirty," the actor said, adding that the lights underneath the water highlighted his and Sussman's "wrinkly skins" and that their feet constantly touching made the shoot "awkward."

Sussman added that the scene wasn't easy for him either because of his water phobia. "I don't like putting my head underwater ever ... A bunch of people had to coach me, you know, 'it's going to be okay ... we have a lot of people around.'" The actor admitted to finding the experience "horrifying and disgusting."

In 2010, Kaley Cuoco, a fervent equestrian, experienced a horrific accident while horse-riding, leaving her with a broken leg at risk of getting amputated, an experience the actress detailed on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Thankfully, her doctors treated the injury, but the treatment left Cuoco with a noticeable cast on her leg.

As a result, the actress missed shooting two episodes of "The Big Bang Theory," and the writers decided to work around the injury by making Penny a bartender. In "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story," series creator Chuck Lorre revealed, "We made [Cuoco] a bartender instead of a waitress, so she was behind the bar. She stood behind couches, or she was seated, and we made it as easy as possible."

Author Jessica Radloff shared with ET that the crew had to employ a stunt double just for a scene where Penny runs back to her room. "It's the one time she had a stunt double. Kaley talks about it [in the book]. She's like, 'You can kind of tell, but that is not me running back into my room because I wasn't able to do it.' A fun little Easter egg."

After four whole seasons of Shamy's intimacy-deprived relationship, fans were pleased to see Sheldon and Amy finally share a kiss in the Season 7 episode "The Locomotive Manipulation." The build-up to Shamy's first kiss was anything but expected, born out of an argument between the two where Sheldon mocks Amy's hopes for a romantic Valentine's weekend and kisses her out of spite.

The kiss turns passionate in a sweet moment, reaffirming the romance between the two social misfits. However, the behind-the-scenes story was more snotty than sweet for Mayim Bialik and Jim Parsons.

In an interview with USA Today, the two actors recalled how Parsons was sick during filming, which made shooting all the more awkward. Parsons pointed out how Bialik "kept swishing around with Listerine or whatever to kill my germs," after which Bialik corrected him by saying, "Hydrogen peroxide." She added, "You were sweating. You had a fever. You were very sick," and Parsons responded jokingly that if the tables were turned, "I would not have kissed you."

Anxiety affects even the most capable actors, including some "Big Bang Theory" stars who had to tackle their struggles while playing their iconic characters. 

In "​​The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story," Jim Parsons revealed how his meticulous process of learning Sheldon's lines in the show's early years aggravated his anxiety. Parsons detailed how his now-husband's proposal for a surprise vacation threw the actor off, saying, "I was just like, 'You people have lost your f***ing minds! I have to stay here and practice. I have to be ready whenever I feel the moment comes to be able to go through these lines again ... In the end, I took all the stuff with me to Montecito, and that was the first time I didn't spend as many hours as I normally forced myself to be comfortable with the material. And it went just fine."

On an episode of "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown," Mayim Bialik and Kevin Sussman opened up about their struggles with anxiety and how it affected their careers. Bialik told Sussman, "With acting stuff, my level of anxiety surrounding performing is very, very high. It's a high level of anxiety ... And when I've tried to do things like improv — things that are very, kind of, free form, I freeze. I literally freeze. It's like an instant knot in your throat ... it's stuck, and there are tears there. Like, I want to cry."

Likewise, Sussman admitted, "I tenaciously guard any preparation time that I can get ... It's less getting up in front of people. That's not what creates the anxiety for me. It's feeling unprepared."

Parched for any sort of physical intimacy from Sheldon, Amy leads him to believe that spanking her would be an apt punishment for lying about her illness in Season 6, Episode 10 — "The Fish Guts Displacement." It was originally going to happen off-camera after the end of the episode, where audiences would only hear sounds of the spanking Sheldon doles on Amy and Amy's poor attempt at masking her pleasure. Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik prepared accordingly, under the impression that they'd just be using their voices for the scene.

However, that changed just before the episode went into production. The spanking was now going to be shown to audiences.

Parsons revealed on "Conan" how this threw him off, saying, "I'm fine with [performing the scene], I don't mind spanking somebody. But I can't tell you how hard it was ... When you're concentrated on making a noise all week, it's like doing a radio play. Once the camera was on me and I realized I haven't worked at all on what my face or the rest of my — I don't know how to handle myself during this." Parsons admitted at a convention held by The Paley Center for Media, "It was, I would say, one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because I found it tremendously amusing."