Kaley Cuoco has revealed that she was mom-shamed while flying with her daughter for the first time.
The Big Bang Theory star, 38, who shares her nine-month-old daughter Matilda with her partner Tom Pelphrey, opened up about the experience during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where she recounted her anger over the situation.
According to Cuoco, the incident began while the family was travelling over Thanksgiving, with the actress revealing that she and her partner were “terrified” about their daughter’s first flight.
To make the experience easier, Cuoco said that she brought a sound machine. “And I was so terrified, so I thought what do we do? We have to bring her sound machine on the plane,” she told Kimmel. “It’s the only thing she can go to sleep to.”
Cuoco then recalled how she’d put the sound machine right next to her daughter’s ear on the plane so that she’d be lulled to sleep, as she reiterated that it’s the “only thing that will get her to go to sleep”.
According to the actress, prior to getting their daughter to sleep, the family was having “one of those flights that you hear other people have” and cringe about.
“She’s crying, she’s crying, we put the sound machine on … she finally falls asleep,” Cuoco continued, before recalling how a flight attendant then came over to inform the couple that another passenger had requested they turn off the sound machine. “And I’m sitting there, and I’m like: ‘Oh my god.’”
“And I can feel Tom be like: ‘Hey, ask the passenger if she wants to hold our screaming child when we turn it off.’ And I mean, the ice went into his veins,” Cuoco recalled. “I couldn’t believe, by the way, that she asked us to turn it off … I was so angry.”
According to Cuoco, the woman who’d requested they turn off the sound machine, who happened to be seated right in front of them, then approached them as they were departing the plane.
“We were so angry,” Cuoco said. “So then we landed, and it was the woman right in front of us. And so we get up and she goes: ‘Oh, so your daughter does know how to smile.’
“It was in that moment where I understood why women end up on Dateline,” Cuoco joked to Kimmel. “This moment, I could have thrown that woman off the plane.”
Cuoco and Kimmel then shared their frustrations with those who “get mad” at babies.
“You see all these things on social media where people are really, truly getting mad at these babies. Like, justice for babies! This is ridiculous … leave them alone,” Cuoco said to cheers from the audience.
