It’s hard to believe it’s been seven years since The Big Bang Theory said its final goodbyes to the live studio audience, and those watching on CBS. So much time has passed, in fact, that two spinoffs have come to fruition, with a third on the way. Kaley Cuoco’s personal life has changed, too, and given the context we have about her relationship with Tommy Pelphrey, I was really interested in what she had to say about Penny, Leonard, and the ending to her iconic sitcom.
I was perusing through Jessica Radloff’s Big Bang Theory book The Definitive, Inside Story Of The Epic Hit Series when I came across Cuoco’s personal wishes about her character’s ending on the series. While she liked a lot of what Leonard and Penny’s relationship was about, it actually seems as if she wished the finale would have gone in a completely separate direction, with Cuoco telling the author:
I really liked they talked about real life. The writers made mundane conversations interesting, whether it was talking about money or how Penny doesn't like her job. These are topics that come up in marriages. And then you had Penny tell Leonard she really didn’t want kids. I actually wished that they did not, because I loved that message so much.
Cuoco previously had some strong feelings at the time about Big Bang ending, but they more had to do with the show itself ending than how it ended. In fact, she famously even cried during the final table read. She’s not fully mad about the finale or anything, but it’s clear from her comments that she didn’t know if the direction of that final episode was really the right fit for Penny the way she’d played her over the course of the last few seasons.
It was cute how the writers did it at the end with Penny's surprise pregnancy, and all in all I'm glad, but I was actually voting for her not to. I loved that she was like, 'No, I don't really want them.’ That’s another thing couples go through– maybe one wants to start a family and the other one doesn’t. Penny became this career woman, and she was really growing in her job and she loved going out with her friends, and she admitted that.
If it’s been a while since you’ve seen the finale, Penny was pregnant and had kept the news from Bernadette, Amy and the girls. Sheldon found out first and, of course, spilled the beans, and the girls were kind of upset with her for keeping the secret. All was well by the show's final scene where they got together to eat takeout on the couch, but Cuoco at the time of the writing of the book felt that Penny’s life was mirroring her own career trajectory, and should have gone a similar way.
She didn’t want her life to change and I loved that she said that. That’s a challenge for me too, in my own life. It was almost mirroring life, in that I understood Penny because I was almost going through the same thing.
Now we know, a lot can change really fast, however. In April of 2022, after her divorce from Karl Cook, Kaley Cuoco met Tommy Pelphrey. The two would soon start dating, and by November of that same year, she’d announced she was pregnant. She told Dax Shepard later on Armchair expert she hadn't though kids were in the cards for her, and her own real-life trajectory honestly ended up mirroring how things changed quickly for Leonard and Penny on the show.
It all worked out exactly as intended, and Cuoco didn't wholly hate the ending of The Big Bang Theory, but if her vote had counted, it's very clear she would have gone in a different direction, just like the show had when they'd fired the original Penny and cast her as "the secret sauce" early on.
