Penny and Sheldon

Geek chic by Jim Colucci

typed by pennyandsheldon.com

No pocket protectors or sci-fi tees here: The stars of The Big Bang Theory show off their sophisticated sides and discuss how viewers have embraced their quirky characters.

It's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday and from the look of things, the normally fastidious Sheldon Cooper must be playing hooky from the physics lab. And while his best friend and fellow scientist, Leonard Hofstadter, may be sporting an uncharacteristically hip mustache and goatee for the summer, these otherwise superserious scientists still seem a bit out of their element as they now jokingly preen for the camera.

That's because today, the actors behind TV's smartest new comedic pair — Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki as Sheldon and Leonard, respectively — and their The Big Bang Theory castmates Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar have traveled far from the show's Burbank, Calif., soundstage. This Watch! photo shoot, in the lobby of New York's glamorously renovated and recently reopened The Pierre hotel, offers the cast of CBS' white-hot sitcom a chance to show a different, sexier side — one that's less Caltech, more couture.

It All Started with a Big Bang

When it premiered in the fall of 2007, Big Bang was CBS' sole new comedy for the season. The show's new Monday night neighbors featured cool, hip ladies' men like How I Met Your Mother's Barney Stinson and Two and a Half Men's Charlie Harper. Big Bang was instead populated with characters far less suave — go ahead, call them nerds, geeks, brainiacs — and yet somehow fit right in.

"There was a distinct moment, in shooting the pilot, when I knew the show would work," remembers Helberg, who plays the ineptly skirt-chasing mama's boy Howard Wolowitz. During a scene in which Sheldon and Leonard were at a sperm bank, "I was offstage and heard the audience's reaction, which went on for so long that the director, Jim Burrows, said, 'There's too much laughter. We have to go back and do it again.' Then, when Kunal [as the girl-shy, Indian-born Rajesh Koothrappali] and I came in, we got entrance applause — and no one knew who we were yet! I just remember thinking, 'This is something special.'"

The nation's critics, however, were harder to convince. When the cast appeared at the semiannual convention of TV journalists the summer before the show's premiere, "they said we were going to fail two episodes in. Before they even saw the show, they were not fans," remembers Cuoco, who plays Penny, the feminine catalyst in apartment 4B.

"And I don't fully blame them," Parsons admits. "The show is better than its description. But I don't know how to describe it." Despite the assurances to the contrary from the comedy's creators — Two and a Half Men's Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, a former Dharma & Greg writer and onetime computer programmer — "the critics assumed that Big Bang would be about cheap shots at intelligent people," Galecki explains. "And if anything, I think the show defends intelligent people."

"I think The Big Bang Theory reflects a shift in the cultural landscape," agrees CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler. "Groups of friends like this, with their type of 'geek chic,' have blossomed into a very familiar and relatable demographic. We're seeing it in film, in literature, and I think it's a fresh way to access comedy."

So is The Big Bang Theory making smart sexy? "Just look at this cast!" jokes Nayyar, with a wave around the table.

"One of the things I've learned from this show," Galecki adds, "is that people who are sometimes called 'nerds' or 'geeks' or 'dweebs' are really just people who are passionate about something. And ultimately, passion is appealing, even if the subject is something you're personally not passionate about."

Interestingly, for Parsons, the attraction in Big Bang's characters lies in what they don't feel. "They all have what we might laugh at and call social shortcomings," he says, "and yet with the possible exception of Leonard, they don't live their lives at all depressed about that. Instead, they have a firm belief, and strong hope, that they will achieve greatness in areas like science and, for Wolowitz, in attracting women."

The can-do attitude has won over some former naysayers. "I was sure Big Bang would just turn into a one-joke pony about smart guys and a dumb blonde," admits Susan Young, formerly of The Oakland Tribune and now a freelance TV journalist. "How wrong I was. Now it's my favorite comedy, one I know will always put a smile on my face and have at least one laugh-out-loud moment."

Call it the Lorre/Prady Paradox: that there could exist a show about characters of rarefied intelligence, working in a field that only those in the rightmost standard deviation on the bell curve of IQ would understand — and yet, somehow, its comedy would be universal.

"It's not rocket science," Mediaweek's TV critic Marc Berman offers in explanation. "The show is not what you would call 'edgy,' but just funny.
The formula for a good comedy can be very simple: You create characters that people can relate to. And we've all lived our lives at some point either knowing a nerd, or feeling like one. These are four guys and a woman we feel like we could be friends with in real life, and so that's why they keep us so entertained."

In fact, in what the show's cast considers a sign of the best-written character comedy — and what they say is the ultimate compliment to Big Bang's writers — they often find themselves not having to say a word to get a laugh.

Particularly in the show's second season, Parsons explains, the show's characters were already so well-defined and familiar that "the audience would start to jump the laugh before the joke had even landed. And that was because they knew what the character was thinking. It was strange for us at first, but it's wonderful." The resulting electricity in the room, Cuoco notes, "makes the show's taping nights really fun. Because every crowd is like a rock concert."

Lorre usually cuts the longest "laugh spreads" from the finished product, Galecki explains, so viewers at home don't get a true indication of the high jinks happening on Warner Bros. Stage 25. Nayyar, who everyone agrees tends to crack up the most at such moments, says he has to resort to deliberately sipping his soup.

And then there is the little mind game Galecki and Parsons have begun playing with each other as they stall during the laughter, waiting to get out their next lines. "Jim and I will battle each other when we're left with nothing to do but stare. He has taken to trying to break me," Galecki reveals. "He'll — just so slightly, and I don't know if even the camera will pick it up — raise an eyebrow a little bit at me. I've even mouthed to him, 'That's not fair.' And he'll mouth back, 'I know.'"

Add a Penny on the Scale

Big Bang was a ratings winner right from its first few airings. But like many other now-classic sitcoms before it, this show, with its ardent astrophysicists, truly soared in the Nielsen ratings in its second season. And Tassler has several theories as to why.

"For one thing, people have fallen in love with the characters," she notes. "Chuck Lorre has crafted such clever, smart, specific stories that have illuminated these relationships." Particularly, she posits, between Penny and the boys. "With Sheldon and Leonard, you got them right from day one. But in Season 2, Penny really blossomed as a character. We saw how she could become more integrated into their lives, and how they would be more involved in hers, and audiences really embraced that."

And Tassler is not the only one who thinks that, ironically, it may be the average-brained Penny who balances this quintet's genius comedic success. Penny, Cuoco says, is everyman's entry point into the realm of the brilliant. "I feel like I represent the audience, who can look at these guys through my eyes."

Cuoco's ability to convey such a natural, good-natured groundedness, Helberg notes, is a testament to her talent. After all, these physicists are connected to their new friend by such a delicate chemistry.

A year before this current hit incarnation, Lorre had attempted an earlier Big Bang pilot, with a female character instead named Katie. The show's four male characters, Nayyar observes, "are very innocent, without any trace of malice." And so when "Katie" acted more manipulative with these malleable men, "it was like she was shooting fish in a barrel. It didn't work," Galecki says. "We've had that problem with guest stars, too," the actor notes. "If they're too malicious towards the guys or show too much of an edge, the audience hates them."

In fact, he and Cuoco say, the show's writers, noticing this phenomenon, even turned it into one of her favorite episodes in Season 2. When their building's newest foxy female began working her wiles on our boys, Penny came to the rescue in a laundry room showdown. "When I stuck up for them and said, 'These are my guys,'" Cuoco remembers, "the crowd screamed. And I kept thinking, 'Don't cry! Don't cry!' Because I was so touched. We're all so protective of these characters, I could cry right now thinking about it."

Nerds on the Floor

Both Galecki, a young veteran of ABC's long-running Roseanne, and Cuoco, who got her first big break as teen on that network's 8 Simple Rules, adjusted early on to the fame, and fan familiarity, that comes with life on a hit sitcom. During his Roseanne years, Galecki remembers, he would often play the outdoor bowling game pétanque with his friend Brad Pitt. "And people would come up and touch me, because I was on TV. Meanwhile, Brad was on the side of every bus and on every billboard for his movie Interview with the Vampire. And he would say sarcastically, 'Yeah, feel free to touch him.' Because he was shocked." ("Are you saying Brad Pitt was jealous of you?" Cuoco immediately teases.)

Back then, Galecki says, fans on the street would often unimaginatively shout out the name of his TV girlfriend: "Where's Darlene?" And so he expected the Big Bang taunts to have started by now. "But the fans of this show treat these characters with such respect," the actor says. "There was just one time, when we had really good seats at a Lakers game, and some jock was jealous. He yelled, 'NERDS!'"

"And you were like, 'Whatever! We're the nerds on the FLOOR!'" Cuoco quips.

The bestowal of such celeb status on erstwhile eggheads has predictably won the show quite a few fans among Sheldon and Leonard's real-life counterparts. "Let's be honest, this is the biggest thing that's happened to scientists in a long time," Cuoco jokes.

But as Nayyar elaborates, "We also have many fans in the high school theater community. For a lot of people who maybe have felt like misfits, or haven't fit in with the cool crowd, we sort of become rock stars."

And ironically, as it turns out, in real life, all four of the actors now famous as TV scientists have no actual affinity for the stuff at all. Growing up on the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast of Texas, Parsons says he had an initial flirtation with a career in meteorology. "I took a class in college—and it was the only class I ever failed," he admits. "That, plus I didn't take to it at all. It turns out, the sciences didn't want me any more than I wanted them."

In the end, that key difference between actor and character just makes playing Sheldon, who often spurts pages-long monologues full of jargon supplied by the show's technical consultant, that much more of a challenge. Parsons reveals that he learns his lines — usually without comprehending the scientific principles behind them — by writing them out longhand.

A Star Sitcom Explodes

With the show's third season comes a new time slot, Mondays at 9:30. "One of our priorities this year is to punch Big Bang into the stratosphere, to make this top 20 show a top 10," explains CBS scheduling chief Kelly Kahl.

The move, to the time slot behind Two and a Half Men, creates a virtual Chuck Lorre Power Hour. And as Lorre explains, he's thrilled to have the continued opportunity to create more Big Bang.

"Each cast member is very skilled, a consummate pro, who brings a lot of heart and compassion to the work, and they have a real bond off-camera," says the veteran producer. "That combination is not only rare and priceless, but also clearly visible when you watch the show. The end result is an incredibly funny and smooth-working ensemble."

This spring CBS announced that the network was taking the rare step of renewing Big Bang for not just one but two more seasons, which in TV is the equivalent of academic tenure for a Ph.D. like Leonard. Subsequently, Nayyar and Parsons put down roots in L.A. by each buying a house, as they plan for a long and prosperous run. Meanwhile, when we last saw Sheldon and his cohort in May, they were headed for a summer of research in the Arctic. As they arrive back in Pasadena, and on our small screens, this fall, The Big Bang Theory is poised to generate laughs well into 2011. In physics, that's known as having great "potential energy." Perhaps that's a phrase we'll hear any one of our favorite, funny physicists utter in Season 3.

Making a Big Bang at Comic-Con by David A. Keeps

Ask the cast of The Big Bang Theory what kind of comic-book powers they'd like to have and the answers come faster than a speeding bullet: "Flight! Teleportation! Invisibility!" shout the guys who play the socially awkward physicists on the hit comedy: Johnny Galecki (Leonard), Jim Parsons (Sheldon), Simon Helberg (Howard) and Kunal Nayyar (Raj).

Kaley Cuoco, who plays Penny, their on-screen female foil, trumps them all: "The ability to read men's minds."

Dressing up for TV Guide Magazine is about as close as this comedy quintet is likely to get. Yet at last year's Comic-Con, the world's most prestigious sci-fi and fantasy convention, the Big Bang gang were hailed as superheroes.

"We hoped a few hundred people might show up," recalls cocreator Chuck Lorre, who populates the Big Bang writers' room with people "who can have long conversations about the arcane minutiae of Star Wars and Star Trek." Instead, a panel discussion with the cast drew more than 2,000 fans and another thousand were turned away.

"I thought it was a terrible idea, that the collectors and fans would think it was offensive that this nerd show was visiting, but it was the exact opposite," Galecki says. Though the actor claims to be merely a drama geek, Galecki's personal history sends the needle on the nerd-o-meter spinning: As a kid, he played cello and "used to strike out at T-ball"; his favorite comic book is called Elfquest; and he grumbles good-naturedly that in online chat rooms, people think he should play Weasel, the sidekick to Marvel Comics' mercenary Deadpool.

For Parsons, a "Close Encounters" fan who says he was "crushed when I lost a Princess Leia action figure in the seat-belt slot in the back of my mother's Oldsmobile," Comic-Con was a revelation. "I realized that we are playing these people, admirers of comic books and sci-fi movies," he says. "It was so sweet that they embraced us."

Well, not literally. "We did have security," Helberg says. "You wouldn't think you would need security to protect you from a Trekkie, but there were thousands of them." Helberg's early fanboy memories: calling his Luke Skywalker figure "my man" and owning a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe action figure. "And he rode a tiger around," Helberg admits. "It was a lot like Siegfried and Roy."

Last year for Comic-Con, the cast took a train from L.A. to San Diego. Things quickly got interesting when they rented a speedboat and Cuoco elected herself captain of the enterprise. "Kaley has the need for speed," recalls Nayyar. "Being manly men, we were terrified. I was so afraid I thought I would have to jump into the sea and pee." Perhaps the most Comic-Con-oriented cast member, Nayyar has been known to engage in weekend-long sessions of the board game Star Wars Epic Duels and claims to have seen the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy over 30 times.

Cuoco, who as a girl did commercials for Barbie and now owns two horses, which isn't at all nerdy, rises to her own defense. "It was like being in an episode of the show. They're going 2 mph on the boat and I'm like, 'C'mon, you losers, I'm bored. Let's get going.'"

Comic-Con opened her eyes to a world far away from her own experience. "We walked around with all the people in costumes, who were so passionate about dressing and acting the way they wanted to," she says. "I think I ran into four C-3POs, which was a tad scary. But I never even thought about Star Wars before."

She is genuinely excited to return. So is Lorre, who adds, "We may ask the U.S. Navy to escort them this year."

Big Bang's success: It's not rocket science by Maria Elena Fernandez

It makes absolute sense that the folks at the Apple store Genius Bar would freak out at the sight of the cast of 'The Big Bang Theory.' Or that thousands of fans would fill a room to spend time with them at Comic-Con last summer. But when the paparazzi of Mexico City went so berserk over the five actors during a promotional visit in December that they required an armed bodyguard, the young cast knew their little sitcom was turning into a sensation.

Statistically, 'Big Bang' is defying all kinds of odds, most notably in that it's thriving at a time when the multi-camera format has been declared dead and network television as a whole is struggling. In its sophomore season, the buddy comedy has registered 20& more viewers, reaching the 10 million mark, and building enough confidence at CBS that it's been renewed for two more years.

At its core, 'Big Bang' is a show about brainy best friends, genius nerds and social misfits who for the first time on TV are the source of the joke, not the butt of it. But on a deeper level, it's also about love, loyalty, friendship and the frailties of the human spirit mixed in with quantum physics and superhero fanboydom. Think 'Weird Science' meets 'Friends.'

Behind the scenes, the show is even more like 'Friends.' The 'Big Bang' cast has gelled personally in a way that is rare on television and is reminiscent of Jennifer Aniston and the gang, a group that stuck together even during contract negotiations. It may be too early for the 'Big Bang' actors to be landing million-dollar-per-episode deals, but their close relationships and on-camera chemistry are highly in their favor.

"You don't have to be friends with your colleagues," said Johnny Galecki, who plays Leonard, the heart of the show, and the most recognizable actor of the group when it premiered, primarily from his work on 'Roseanne.' "But it all happened very naturally. The good thing is we allow ourselves our bad moods and dark days. There's no expectation to be buddy-buddy either. We're all kind of bracing for the day when we disappoint each other, anger each other, or get under someone's skin because so far we've just had so much fun."

How much fun? The 'Big Bang' gang works Monday through Friday, has at least two dinners a week together, and has vacationed together. They meet for drinks, play Scrabble, "and we know everything about each other, and that's good and bad," said Kaley Cuoco, who plays Penny, the actress-waitress who lives next door to the genius physicists, Leonard and Sheldon (Jim Parsons).

"It's one of the luckiest things," said Simon Helberg, who plays Howard Wolowitz, an engineer who fancies himself a Casanova. "We have a shorthand with each other. There's no tension. There's just honesty, and it doesn't feel competitive."

If they were a family, Galecki and Parsons would be the parents, Helberg the protective older brother, Kunal Nayyar the picked-on middle child and Cuoco would be the smart-aleck little sister who gives them hair styling tips before a Times photo shoot.

"It was so cute," Cuoco said. "I love these boys more than anything. This is the best environment for me: me and a bunch of men. It doesn't get any more fun than this."

Many of the show's laughs revolve around obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is where Parsons comes in, playing Sheldon, a character bound to become classic. Sheldon's obsessive-compulsive personal routine, his penchant for condescending soliloquies and meticulous takeout food ordering, combined with his hypochondria and lack of social filters, exasperates his friends daily.

"The thing about Sheldon is that he can't exist without Leonard," said co-creator Bill Prady ('Dharma & Greg'). "Unless you show that somebody is capable of loving him, and Leonard clearly does, unless you show that somebody in the world is capable of putting up with him, why would you as a viewer put up with him?"

Put up with him? Fans adore the theoretical physicist/child prodigy who is completely clueless about how high-maintenance he is. That paired with Parsons' impressive comedic delivery and ability to memorize polysyllabic jargon is the reason the character was the first to break out.

"He has long monologues of these remarkable quantum theorems that you can barely pronounce let alone get out of your mouth," said Peter Roth, president of Warner Bros. Television, which produces the show. "I remember the first time I saw him, I thought this man is a phenomenon."

Even when it's not scientific, Sheldon is long-winded, which is Parsons' favorite part of playing him, even though it can be maddening learning Sheldon's lines.

Sheldon when receiving a holiday gift: "You bought me a present? Why would you do such a thing? I know you think you're being generous, but the foundation of gift giving is reciprocity. You haven't given me a gift. You've given me an obligation. The essence of the custom is that I now have to go out and purchase for you a gift of commensurate value and representing the same perceived level of friendship as that represented by the gift you've given me. Ah, it's no wonder suicide rates skyrocket this time of year. Oh, I brought this on myself by being such an endearing and important part of your life."

"The rhythm of the language they've written for Sheldon, I love that challenge," Parsons said. "The writers are so good at using so many words and scientific jargon and being verbose in general and burying the joke in there. The challenge of threading that out, driving these speeches in a way it still hits the comic rhythm, I love it, though I want to pull my hair out sometimes."

Parsons uses a trick he learned in a junior high speech class to help him enunciate in Sheldon's unique way. He places a pencil in his mouth to help with the placement of his tongue and teeth.

"What you see is not the result of a casual, instinctive approach," Prady said. "These guys work hard. From time to time, they'll get together to prep for the table read. I've never heard of a cast doing that. And they always find stuff that winds up being a guide for us as we rewrite. It's an unbelievably constructive collaboration."

When production on the pilot wrapped, veteran writer-producer Chuck Lorre, who co-created it, said he could feel he had a hit. "Something was happening that transcends what you imagined."

Galecki remembers how the majority of TV writers blasted the show before it launched.

"It went from being a show that was lambasted before it even aired for making fun of intelligent people to a show that intelligent people claim is uniting them, which is unexpected and touching," he said.

"It's a very intimate reaction that they have. I think they relate to these characters not because they want to emulate them because they think they're cool. They relate to them because they relate to that time they put their foot in their mouth or that time they embarrassed themselves like these characters have a tendency to do."

Nayyar, who plays Raj, an incredibly introverted astrophysicist, saw it himself at Comic-Con when a boy told the cast that he used to feel like a geek because he performs in theater and loves comic books, but the show had changed his life.

"He got very emotional and he said that he found himself and he wasn't ashamed of who he was anymore," Nayyar said. "That meant a lot to us. A lot of people at Comic-Con thanked us for giving 'our people' a voice. I definitely never expected that to happen on a sitcom. We're here to be funny, you know what I mean?"

The theory behind The Big Bang Theory’s big bang by Nicholas White

It is Tuesday afternoon, and inside Stage 25 on the Warner Brothers studio lot, there's a buzz of excitement. It's either that or a medical emergency. This is home of The Big Bang Theory, one of TV's hottest sitcoms, and through the clutter of cameras, lights and crew, Simon Helberg, one of the show's stars, is having what appears to be a panic attack.

Helberg, who plays geeky engineer Howard Wolowtiz, is pacing by himself off stage, shaking his hands and walking in an apparent trance. As a show aide watches, it's clear he's not having a freak out but rather getting loose before a pivotal scene with guest star Summer Glau, the super-hot babe from Terminator: The Sara Connor Chronicles. After the director yells action, Glau rejects advances from the nerdy engineer, who reacts with an assortment of facial tics that expose a vulnerability guaranteed to wring both discomfort and laughter.

He then asks for a picture of her with him for his Facebook page, which she obliges but does not smile. It's funny — painfully so — a genius comedic moment on a show about the comic neediness and nerdiness of young geniuses. "You're kind of making an ass of yourself," Helberg later says of his job.

But it's worth the embarrassment. The series, which is about two Cal Tech prodigies in physics who share an apartment and live across from a gorgeous blond, stems from the fertile and funny brain of executive producer and co-creator, Chuck Lorre, whose prime time resume includes Two and a Half Men, Roseanne, Cybil and Dharma and Greg. "When we get the script," Helberg adds, "it's almost like you can just see it."

In addition to Helberg, The Big Bang Theory stars Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and Kunal Nayyar, and between scenes, the cast hangs out together, sipping coffee and trading stories as if they were pals in an office with neighboring cubicles on a coffee break. In reality, such as it is, they're the stars of TV's number two rated sitcom, in other words a genuine hit, and yet instead of ego or stardom, they seem to enjoy the quiet confidence of ordinariness.

"We're in a bubble here," says Nayyar, who plays Ph.D. Rajesh Koothrappali. "We come to work, hang out, do our thing, and it's hard to look from the outside and say it is a bona fide hit. The media and critics are now beginning to talk about it. But it's not a show like Gossip Girl or something that's always in U.S. tabloids. We're not in that sort of public eye. We're blessed."

They're not likely to end up in the tabloids either. "It's the most sober and celibate cast I've ever worked with," says Galecki. "It's a healthy group especially for a young cast."

Take Parsons, aka the ultra-wordy Sheldon Cooper. The Houston-born actor, whose previous credits include seven episodes on Judging Amy, can rattle off 1,000 words of dialogue without a sweat. He's obsessive about maintaining a clean dressing room — it's legendary among his castmates — and he has a preference for herbal teas. "There's not a lot of jokiness that goes on the set, maybe surprisingly so," he says. "There's a seriousness about the funny."

Jim Parsons: I [recently] got called nerd stud. I've never heard that before. I think it's a fabricated idea. If there's any true to it, I guess I'm happy! Maybe over my hiatus, I'll get a personal trainer. Next year, Sheldon can be in a Speedo: an experiment to see if his skin can adjust to new weather conditions. I think people would be taken aback if Sheldon was ripped, like, "What the hell"?

Kaley Cuoco: Smart is the new sexy: I think it always was, but now we're bringing it out a little more. As smart as these guys are, that's why people watch.

Bill Prady (Executive Producer/Co-Creator): People often say, "Are you making fun of Leonard and Sheldon?" My answer is: spend a half hour in our writers' room. We're not making fun of them. We are them. All of their quirks and passions come from us. Logically, if this is the nerdiest show on television, that would make us the nerdiest writers in television. Therefore, we would like to say it's the coolest show on television, and the coolest audience.

Kunal Nayyar: Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady said they never set out to create a show about nerds. They set out to create a show about incredible minds. Their lifestyle is nerdy, and I would presume all of us have that side to us. There is a part of everyone that has that.

Simon Helberg: People watch it because they can relate to being an outsider or underdog. It feels like a little secret that you have.

Johnny Galecki: Initially, critics said it was going to be a dumb show making fun of smart people. I'm really proud that it never was that. I watch some shameless, mindless reality TV. I also watch 60 Minutes, Dateline, and CNN constantly. I don't think that high numbers for relatively mindless television means the audience is dumber.

During another break in the action, Parsons and Cuoco provide a tour of the set and crack jokes about the numerous Justice League dolls sitting on window sills and Post-It reminders on a bedside calendar. Cuoco, an ace tennis player in real life, points to one of three set ping-pong tables, bragging that she dominates as set champion and warning that sharing paddles is strictly prohibited. For comedic effet, she jokes that she likes to read comic books naked.

Parsons explains a five-foot-tall, multi-colored strand of DNA in their living room. Physics books line shelves. Mathematical formulas are written on white boards. The only formula not visible is the one that's made this show a ratings hit. Last year's writers strike gave the then-new series chance to gain its footing, and since the show's return for season two last fall and CBS' fashioning of Monday into a must-laugh night of comedy, it's seen a steady growth to where it has been pulling in 13 million viewers. "There are still people that don't know about it yet," says Helberg.

Simon Helberg: There were five or six weeks in a row where every week we're growing. They put us after Two and a Half Men, and we slowly jumped up after that. It's not like Friends where they were a commodity, and it was like an empire. It's nice to be able to live a normal life and still feel like people are excited about it.

Kunal Nayyar: Every week, we started having 500,000 more viewers, 500,000 more viewers.

Kaley Cuoco: I think the show has always been a huge word-of-mouth show. I run into people that just started [watching], because they air it on the planes. They tell their friends. It started in recent months. It's shown in the ratings. All of a sudden, people caught on to what it was. I literally think it's people going, "Oh my God, you have to watch this show, it's so funny." People just started watching. I've never seen a show do this before. It's crazy.

Johnny Galecki: I think it's still turning because we're growing. With all due respect to marketing and publicity, people are really finding it on their own. It seems to be more word of mouth. When people discover something on their own, they appreciate it more, as opposed to being bombarded by billboard campaigns or something stuffed down their throats. It took a little while to find it and the writers strike. It's evolving slowly but surely.

Jim Parsons: One of the best things that happened to us is we came back after the strike. It was really hard for shows, especially hour-long dramas. We were able to get back up and running again. Not only did we do 17 new [shows], but we had a new library to rerun that summer. I feel that was the punch that helped going in. It felt the launch of a second season, instead of a re-launch or a 1.5. So much is intangible of what people are going to take to. I don't know why they take to something or don't. Shows you hate go for years. You don't know why this whole [group] of people likes something you don't or vice versa. That's something I can look at as tangible. I know that helped. There is no way it didn't.

Bill Prady: I think if you look back, it's when the show came back last year after the Writers Strike. You anecdotally came to be aware that people knew the show. People say, "What do you do for a living?" I would mention the show, and everybody knew what I was talking about. This year we've been steadily building every week. We had a great opportunity to be at 9:30 because of the President's speech and have a whole new group of people watching the show. It's nice to know that you're not crazy that something you think is something turns out actually to be something.

Some history. Premiering in September 2007, The Big Bang Theory was the creation of Roseanne and Two and a Half Men veteran Chuck Lorre and Dharma & Greg producer Bill Prady. It was conceived as, perhaps, the anti-Two and a Half Men, which has often been maligned (by shows such as Family Guy) for milquetoast easy laughs. The Big Bang Theory, with its brainy dialogue, was an apparent contrast...even if the sitcom conventions give it a mainstream familiarity. Even episode names are multi-syllable: The Maternal Capacitance and The Financial Permeability.

The Big Bang Theory premiered to 9 million viewers in 2007, making it TV's 37th highest rated show. Despite a nearly five-month lapse in new episodes, the show bounced around between 7 and 9 million viewers for all of its 17-episode first season. Its second season premiered in September 2008 again to 9 million viewers. In weeks since, it has gradually increased to now being TV's 15th highest rated show. For many people, may still sound like a remote show on The Discovery Channel or History Channel. "We're a sitcom that has a fan base that treats the show the way a sci-fi fan base treats their shows," Bill Prady says. "There's a kind of passion in our fans that you don't usually see in 30-minute comedies. They're like Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek fans."