Penny and Sheldon

Bazinga! Sheldon Speaks by Jenna Busch

Ign

The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons tells us what’s in store for our favorite TV geek.

US, January 29, 2010 – If you had any doubt that geek culture has taken over, check out the numbers for The Big Bang Theory. The writing celebrates our obsession with The Green Lantern, reminds us that we are not the only ones who can say hello in Klingon and keeps us laughing at ourselves. Even the Emmys have taken notice.

I just spoke with Emmy Award nominated actor Jim Parsons, who plays socially awkward — but eminently loveable — theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper. Parsons tells us his theory on why the show is such a hit, when and if love will come to Sheldon and working with co-star Kaley Cuoco. “She’s a wonderful verbal dancing partner,” he says, though he tells us he is far better at bussing tables. He also gives us a sneak peek at this week’s episode. Hint: It involves a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.

I love the show and I watch every week. And I keep thinking about all the people who said the sitcom was dead. You guys seem to have completely revived it. What do you think it is about the show that turned an entire show style on its ear?

Well for one thing, I don’t think there is any reinventing of a wheel going on here. You know what I mean? I don’t think anybody’s trying to do anything around here that is in any way changing the old school of thought with the traditional multi-camera sitcom. And that may be one of the biggest things we have going in our favor. We’re trying to simply execute as well as possible, a format that’s been around. That’s been related to live theater.

My thing, and I’ve always said this, and I’m not trying to defer attention or anything like that, is the writing…I’ve heard it said that it’s a writer’s medium, and I completely believe that…and in our case specifically, we only have what they bring. [Laughs] We can only play with what they’ve written, as it were. And we’re in a very fortunate circumstance where what they’re writing is sincerely funny, you know? And maybe ‘sincere’ is sort of the key word there. There is a great sincerity in what we’re doing here…in deference to the format itself. We’re trying to do nothing that different than anything that’s been done before. But we’re trying to do it as best we can.

And then to these characters…We’re trying to be as sincere with them and their situations as we can. Yes, sometimes you’ll have a laugh at their expense, but more often than not, you only buy yourself that opportunity because, more often than not, we’re celebrating these characters. The writers and the actors all have a sincere affection for these characters. Because they’re so fun to play. They have so many wonderful and fun qualities about them.

You mentioned celebrating the characters. You guys have been so embraced by geek culture. I think it’s not just the terms that you use, etc. I think it’s that you guys have such a great affection for your characters.

Absolutely. I think that’s completely true.

You must get asked constantly about how geeky you are. I’d read about your Star Wars figures and how you want an invitation to Hogwarts…

Right.

Do you guys ever feel pressure…I mean, the geeks have sort of made you their standard bearers.

I don’t and it may be blissful ignorance on my part. Or it’s just not affecting me. But I really don’t. What’s funny is, some of their more geekish, nebbish, fanboy qualities, if you will, which I can see on the surface what a big part of the picture we’re painting, they are. And so much of the humor has come from that, and so much of who they are in a day to day way. But I have to say, in the playing of it and in the feeling behind it, it seems so secondary. I don’t know. I feel like, in some ways, these people would be who they are, almost entirely, even if they didn’t have any of those qualities. If they didn’t read comic books. If they weren’t Star Trek and Battlestar fans, or whatever. It’s a happy side bar. It’s extra colors that are laid on top of these really, really smart guys. And I guess that’s it. At the end of the day, when it comes back to square one, the heart of the story is that we’re dealing with four geniuses. To varying degrees. I think Sheldon is probably the smartest. [Laughs]

I was thinking about some of your more complex lines, and I had read that the writing really helps you, but that you do sit down with notecards. I’d also read that you play piano. I’m wondering if being a musician helps you memorize. You really do have a rhythm to your speech.

I feel like it must. I do think of the scenes and this dialogue very specifically in a musical way. And it’s much more self conscious, I have to say. I am able to consciously realize that I’m doing it. The way that they’re writing this, and it’s what I felt from day one with this…it wasn’t the story that grabbed me, though it was lovely. And it wasn’t even the characters themselves as far as who made them what they are. When I first saw the audition sides for this show, I really wanted to leap at the opportunity to get to execute this dialogue. And it was all about the rhythms they put in there. And one of the things the writers are so good at is utilizing, not just scientific terms, but especially in the case of Sheldon, just so many damn words in general, but putting them in a format that has a song to it.

I think there is a musicality to any conversation in general. Some a bit more melodic than others, depending who you’re talking to. [Laughs] It’s most especially accentuated here. It’s definitely highlighted, maybe in any comedy. But most certainly in this one, I think. And it’s one of the great joys. And it’s one of the ways in which, as an actor, in this show at least, I know when something is not going right. Nine times out of ten I’m right about it. Because suddenly you can’t access the rhythm. And either they’re about to rewrite something that’s going to make it fall into place…or you’ve got more days of rehearsal and suddenly you’re going to feel it…I frequently say, ‘That scene sings like a song.’

You know, Chuck (Lorre) was a musician who wrote songs and at least one Top 40 hit for Blondie, I believe. I think any comedy writer has a certain rhythm and I think that Chuck, specifically, has a very…[laughs]…he knows how to make the twenty-two minutes of television play by in the right way. I think it’s the reason that his shows repeat so well in audience numbers. Because I feel like the stories are good and the things you discover the first time you watch the stories are lovely. But perhaps its best quality is that the episode itself goes by like a song. Even if you know what’s going to happen because you’ve seen it once or twice before, it’s still so much fun to watch. And I think that has to do with the rhythm of it. It’s like a favorite song. You know the song, you know where it’s going, but it’s still enjoyable because you like hearing certain notes hit. You like hearing certain rhythms hit.

I agree. This is a show I would want on DVD, because it really is something I’d watch over and over again.

Thank you, first. And secondly, I agree with you. As much as I’m able to say that without sounding like a complete snot. [Laughs] It just turns into a really good time. And that’s not to take away any stories or depth that’s actually there. It’s all there and it’s all good. But at the end of the day, what makes it repeatable…it’s fun.

One of the things fans have reacted to the most are the scenes between you and Penny (Kaley Cuoco). What is it about your chemistry?

Well, I think what it was bred of, coming into the first season, and especially hitting its stride in the second season is that…they are the North and South poles of…all five regular characters on this show. I don’t know which is which. [Laughs] They’re just polar opposites. She’s so earth bound. She is our everyman…and Sheldon is the most heady of the characters. The most, I don’t want to say without his feet on the ground, but in the truest sense of the word, his life, his existence is absorbed in his head. I think that is the biggest ingredient of it. No matter what you do at that point with your characters, it’s going to be a good time, because they’re polar opposites.

But then I have to say, I had never worked with Kaley before I did this show, and we started doing these scenes together, and for whatever reason, I just…it’s such a satisfying time working with her. It is, aah. I can’t put my finger on it, always. But me, as Jim, I have such a good time working with her as Kaley, the actress. And speaking to her through these characters’ voices and having her speak back is just…to bring it back to the music thing again, it’s a wonderful dance. [Laughs] She’s a wonderful verbal dancing partner.

Another thing people have really responded to are the scenes with Sheldon’s mom (Laurie Metcalf). Will we see any more of that this season?

I certainly hope so. [Laughs] You have to take the good with the bad, I guess is what it is. The reason I think the scenes are so damn good is because Laurie is such a gifted actress. The problem you have, working with a gifted actress is that she’s always working. So both her and Christine Baranski…it’s hard to find available times for them! [Laughs] Because they’re so good, everyone wants to use them in some way. So I really feel like a combination of whether a storyline occurs to the writers and is she available for it…she certainly knows her way around acting in general and certainly she has done plenty of the half hour work in TV as well. She just couldn’t be an easier fit when she comes over here. She’s just a good person, you know?

You know everyone wants to know if you think Sheldon will ever find love.

Yeah…I want to guess yes, but I honestly don’t hold out a lot of hope. The reason is very specific. I’ve been part of panel discussions with Chuck Lorre. With Bill Prady. And they have professed that…if these characters change at all, it’s going to be very slow. At the rate of watching paint dry. And…I’ve heard Chuck say this a few times, he has a real aversion to…I think he views Sheldon finding love or the desire for Sheldon to find love as a bit of an attempt to normalize Sheldon. And see the more normal side of Sheldon and oh, he is like us. [Laughs] He’s very interested in continuing to celebrate how different Sheldon is than the general populace. And he really likes exploring this version of Sheldon, where Sheldon has essentially kind of opted out of the romance scene. He’s not taking time for it. In fact, he’s kind of deemed it something that for him, at this point, is sort of a waste of time. There is so much more for him to do, he sees, specifically in science in this case, but whatever.

I hear what he’s saying and I actually love what he’s saying. And I love making those odd choices, those smallest percentile of the populace choices for Sheldon. But I don’t think everybody necessarily wants to see Sheldon normalized. I think that they’ve done such a wonderful job of creating a character that people have a fondness for. And I think wanting to see Sheldon find love is the same thing as wanting to see Sheldon taken care of in some way. Someone to help him along through things that he obviously stubs his toe through, socially…but that brings me back to why I don’t think it will happen. It’s half the fun of playing this character…all the situations where he is on his own and he is clueless. It’s such a dichotomy. He’s a genius and then to get to go through those circumstances where he is clueless…using his big brain for every possibility and just failing, failing. [Laughs] Failure has never been so fun.

I also think that those moments where Sheldon does something sweet for Penny…I think they have more impact if you don’t have him doing that for a girlfriend all the time.

Yeah. I would agree with you. It does add a lot of weight to it. They’ve done such a good job of executing, and I feel, letting play this Penny and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) relationship…they did go against the traditional format in this way. We’re not hanging on ‘will they, won’t they.’ No. They’re doing it. Let’s see what happens. And as far as that relates to giving Sheldon any romantic interest, I think it opens…for the reasons we just said, and others…a much bigger can of worms. And you have to be prepared, I think, as writers and a cast if you’re going to dive into that. You can’t short change yourselves or anybody else. You can’t go in and go, ‘Ooh, this isn’t working,’ and hit reverse as fast as you can with the storyline. I think there is a lot more ground to cover that doesn’t require us to jump in there just yet.

But what the hell do I know? I’ll be honest with you. I never know what story they’re going to deliver. I will not know next week’s story…we’re going to go on hiatus after tonight. We will come in for a table read on Wednesday morning, and it will be Tuesday night at nine o’clock at night before I even get sight of the next script. [Laughs] They won’t tell me a thing. Unless they need to ask me something for my safety, like, ‘Are you able to ride a unicycle?’ Which they have asked. And I said, ‘No, but I’m willing to learn.’ It never came up again. That was over a year ago. I’m grateful. [Laughs] I’ve heard it’s dangerous.

Yeah! I would think so! [Laughs]

How could it not be?

And I hear you’re diving through balls in Chuck E. Cheese in the next episode.

Yes, and might I say, it was one of the finest ideas the writers have had. Such a simple thing. But it goes back to what I said about the science. Wow! We can end up there. I won’t tell you how we end up there exactly. But it’s through science that we end up at Chuck E. Cheese in a bunch of balls. [Laughs] I had so much fun doing that scene. It wasn’t easy! I was really surprised at the lung power it took to fight your way through a ball pit like that. It felt very much like swimming but there was a lot more, it felt like to me, a lot more force to get through to do that. It was very fun. Very colorful.

I hear you also bus tables at The Cheesecake Factory?

Yes. And may I say that Jim as an actor is better at doing that than Kaley as an actress?

Really?

Yes! I had those plates on my arms and I said it out loud one day. I didn’t even think about it. ‘Better than Kaley.’ [Laughs] And you know…it took me longer in life to hit success than Kaley, so perhaps I had more opportunities to perfect dishes on arms and stuff like that. I don’t know.

Beauty and the geeks by Paige Albiniak

NY post

As initially conceived, there was no Penny, the lovable girl-next-door on CBS’ top-rated comedy, ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ There was just a super-sarcastic neighbor named Katie who was mercilessly mean to her super-geek neighbors, Leonard and Sheldon.

But test audiences despised that character, and the show’s producers went back to the drawing board.

After the rewrite, producers brought back in Kaley Cuoco to read for the role of Penny. Cuoco, who, at the time, was best-known for her role as the eldest daughter on ABC’s ’8 Simple Rules,’ had auditioned to play Katie, but that part wasn’t right for her, she says.

“The second-time around, the producers and the network were so on it with me. They told me that Penny had to be wonderful, loving and sweet and the audience had to adore her,” says Cuoco, 24.

Cuoco nailed it, getting through the audition process in two days, and today Penny is the glue that holds “The Big Bang Theory” together.

“Penny has always been the audience’s point of view and the ambassador into the world of our guys,” says Bill Prady, one the series’ executive producers.

Penny, an aspiring actress who’s waitressing at The Cheesecake Factory, lives next door to two brilliant but socially inept physicists, Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons). While most women would ignore guys like this, Penny is “completely wonderful to them from day one,” says Cuoco.

In fact, one episode finds Penny applying menthol rub to a sick Sheldon’s chest while he begs her to sing “Soft Kitty” to him as his mother once did. She rolls her eyes several times, but she does it.

“Penny handles Sheldon like no one else,” says Cuoco. “She’s wonderful and sweet, but she also has a backbone. She says what’s on her mind.”

This season, Penny and Leonard — the less geeky of the two roommates — became a couple. While the pairing seems unlikely, Cuoco says the fans seem to like it.

“I love the Penny-Leonard hook-up. And I love that they didn’t wait eight seasons to get them together,” she says. “But I have a feeling it won’t last. If I were writing the show, I would say that it wouldn’t last long.”

Conversely, ‘Bang’ fans want Penny and the socially-oblivious, germ-phobic Sheldon to get together. “It’s a very strange idea,” says Cuoco.

Asked if a woman exists out there for Sheldon, Cuoco says, “No. Unless it’s like a robot that Sheldon builds and can control.”

Over the course of her three-season run on ‘Big Bang,’ Cuoco has become a favorite of geeks who wish someone just like her would move in next door.

“They are a little obsessed with Penny, really,” she says. “I have definitely not known any men like this in my own life — these guys are on another dimension. They are full-on brilliant, genius boys.”

The California native has been acting and modeling since she was six years old. Her big break came with ’8 Simple Rules,’ when she had just turned 16. A modest hit on ABC in 2002, the show struggled after star John Ritter died of an aortic dissection just two episodes into its second season.

The show went on for two more seasons without him. “Doing that show for one season with John Ritter is an experience I’ll never forget,” Cuoco says.

After ’8 Simple Rules,’ Cuoco played Billie in the eighth season of ‘Charmed,’ a role she enjoyed, but working on a one-hour drama reminded her why she prefers sitcoms.

“Dramas require 18-hour days where you want to kill yourself,” says Cuoco, who is single. “You can have a life while you work on a sitcom, and I’m selfish. I love my life, and I like to do other things besides work.”

With “Big Bang Theory” attracting nearly 16 million viewers each week, Cuoco can expect a long-run playing the girl next door. Asked why she thinks the show is a hit, she says, “The characters are really lovable, and the writing is brilliant. The guys couldn’t be more innocent, but there’s also a little bit of sass to it.”

Geek chic by Jim Colucci

Watch!

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.

Jim Parsons heads up the 'Big Bang Theory' geek squad by Brian Truitt

USA weekend

The CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory has been having its best ratings ever the past few weeks, and Jim Parsons has to be behind some of that success. A recent Emmy nominee, Parsons is spot-on as uber-genius scientist Sheldon, with his trademark game Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock and penchant for lovably alienating everyone around him. This past Monday, Sheldon spent much of the episode trying to train next-door neighbor Penny (Kaley Cuoco), girlfriend of Sheldon’s pal and roommate Leonard (Johnny Galecki), using Pavlovian methods and a box of chocolates.
I talked with Parsons, who’s as witty as his superhero-loving character, for an upcoming piece in the magazine, but read below for his thoughts on his home state and how he’d feel if Sheldon ever got a girlfriend.

You grew up in Texas. Is there anything you miss from living there?

No. 1, people in Texas in general are extremely nice. There is just a Southern hospitality where even on the worst days, you generally run into nice people in stores you go to and you don’t feel like you’re ever encroaching on their time. Sometimes I miss that, although I have to say, I’ve been really fortunate in both New York and L.A., people are really nice there, too. I spent all my time in Houston, so while there are many touches of — I don’t know, what does one expect from Texas? Horses and a bunch of 10-gallon hats? Well, there are some horses and there are some 10-gallon hats, but it’s also a major metropolitan city. More than missing anything, I just really treasure the time I got to spend. I got to do so much theater in Houston and so much work, both at the University of Houston and a theater group I worked with for years down there.

Sheldon’s a theatrical sort in his own way, but do you miss the stage?

For us, it’s live and on stage and in front of an audience every week, so that aspect of it I’m getting fulfilled. That being said, it is a different beast, and you do have however many takes it takes to get the scene done, and, I’m sorry, there’s a row of cameras and crewpeople and a director between you and this audience, which there isn’t in theater. I don’t like to do a lot of talking as an actor, but sometimes I do miss a little more intensive introspection.

Would you like to see Sheldon explore a romantic relationship — maybe even with Penny if things didn’t work out for her and Leonard?

I would be so flabbergasted if it was Penny, and that’s not to say they wouldn’t do it.

It seems like the characters are on a path where that could possibly happen, and not just in an alternate universe.

It’s a brother-sister banter between them right now. Now, that is not to say that that’s not a step on the way to the top of those stairs, which may be something else. Will it happen this year? God no. [Series creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady] have both said these characters will change as slowly as watching paint dry. What I like about that, though, is that I think it’s very true to life. One of the reasons people tune in is you count on these characters to do certain things and react certain ways. You don’t want to see major changes sometimes. They’re all such a wealth of awkward material at times, why go messing with them yet? There’s still plenty of ground to mine.

But wouldn’t you just lick your lips at the thought of playing Sheldon on a date?

Believe me, I pine for the day that this happens. I really do. The reason I think it’s not quickly coming is because, at this stage, how do you sell that other than “a very special Big Bang Theory”? It would be monumental! I don’t know how it would happen. All I see is a frying pan to the head. I don’t think he’s going to be willing to accept what it is he’s feeling, and it’s going to have to be exactly that, I think. It’s going to have to overtake him because there’s that out-of-controlness about falling in love and sexual desire that he does not traverse in, really, as a scientist or even as a human being. One of the things that makes him a fun character is this need for a certain level of control over everything: “That’s my spot. I eat this on Mondays. I go to the bathroom at this time. I won’t use this toilet.” Those romantic feelings, any emotions that are overtaking, they take the rug out from under you and they leave you at a lack of control.

I know you’re a big American Idol fan. Would you ever consider being a guest judge?

Really? Now that’s interesting. I saw Ellen DeGeneres guest-judge on So You Think You Can Dance, and it did cross my mind. Not Idol, though. I would do So You Think You Can Dance. My problem is, I have to give so many caveats before I advised the contestants: “Now, I don’t know anything about this, I will be giving you only the viewpoint of the lay audience member at home, I won’t know if it’s good or bad, I’ll just be able to tell you if I liked it or not, and maybe what I did or didn’t like. And a lot of it may have to do with your personality, I’m not sure.” Idol, I’m afraid that’s probably true, too. I’d try never to say that something was pitchy. I hear that a lot. I’ll try not to overuse that phrase.

The big surprise of Big Bang: The bigger audience  by Edward Wyatt

New York Times

BURBANK, Calif. — The most vibrant buzz this summer around the Warner Brothers lot here and CBS Entertainment headquarters in nearby Studio City was not being generated by the slate of new shows on the CBS fall schedule. Rather, it focused on the sudden emergence — during summer repeats, no less — of a series that had been on the air for two seasons.

“The Big Bang Theory,” the CBS comedy about two brilliant physicists and their attempts to relate to the world around them — and to the cute blond woman next door — began drawing surprisingly strong ratings this summer after it moved to a later time slot on Monday, at 9:30 p.m., immediately following that network’s highest-rated comedy, “Two and a Half Men.”

In some weeks of the summer “Big Bang” repeats drew bigger audiences among certain important demographic groups than when the same episodes were first broadcast. So far this fall “Big Bang” has further expanded its audience, becoming the highest-rated live-action comedy among the sought-after young-adult demographic group.

If current trends prevail, its total viewership could soon surpass that of “Two and a Half Men,” long the most-watched comedy on television. Last Monday’s “Big Bang” drew 12.96 million viewers, according to Nielsen, only 5 percent fewer than the 13.63 million for “Men.”

Already “Big Bang” has beaten “Men” among viewers age 18 to 49, the demographic category most valued by advertisers.

The comedies have more in common than their popularity. They were co-created by Chuck Lorre, they tape on adjacent stages on the Warner Brothers lot, and they share several writers and much of their technical crews. And with the upstart closing in on the longtime ratings champion, Mr. Lorre said, he sometimes isn’t sure how to react when the ratings come in.

“There’s a lot of ambivalence,” he said on Tuesday night, during a break in the taping of a “Big Bang” episode. “It’s ‘Yeah!’ then ‘Awww.’ But it’s all good. I can’t claim to understand how this works; I’m just thrilled that it’s working.”

The cast and crew of “The Big Bang Theory” are enjoying their success all the more after surviving two near-death experiences. The show’s first pilot was rejected by CBS, but the network asked Mr. Lorre and Bill Prady, his co-creator, to retool their script and try again. The first version featured the same two male lead characters — Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper, a theoretical physicist, and Johnny Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter, an experimental physicist — but also included a female lead character who was “very damaged and very tough,” Mr. Prady said.

“We had a really hard time casting the role, and in retrospect it was obvious that the problem was not the actresses but the conception of the character,” he said. Focus groups that watched the original pilot were left with protective feelings for the two naïve, socially awkward scientists, and they did not like the prospect of a bitter, manipulative woman taking advantage of them.

“What we all liked was the relationship between these two guys, one who wants his world to be bigger and the other who wants his world to be smaller,” Mr. Prady said. “I think that’s what everyone looked at and said, ‘This is worth trying again.’ “ The creators decided to keep the male characters and to persuade Mr. Parsons and Mr. Galecki not to take another series in the year between the two pilots.

They also called back one of the actresses who auditioned unsuccessfully for the original female role: Kaley Cuoco, a former child actor who played opposite John Ritter in the comedy “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.” Much of the edge was taken off the character of Penny — so much that at first she looked to be little more than a jiggly blonde next door with no apparent motivation for being interested in two science geeks.

It took awhile to find the character’s voice, but now Penny “is one of the guys,” Ms. Cuoco said. “She’s not some untouchable creature.”

Over the first two seasons Penny and Leonard edged toward each other and are now in a full-fledged relationship. But theirs is not the unbelievable type of couple — a gorgeous female and a paunchy, slacker male — that has been so popular in Judd Apatow films recently.

“Penny has been in horrible relationships and picked the wrong guy constantly,” Ms. Cuoco said. “I think she has more baggage than the guys.”

As a result, Mr. Galecki said, “It went from a show that I think may have made fun of intelligent people half of the time to a show that defends intelligent people 99 percent of the time.”

The most interesting relationships are those between the two male leads and among their two boon companions: Rajesh Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), an astrophysicist who is shy to the point of muteness around women, and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), an engineer who maintains an outsize confidence in his skill as a ladies’ man, despite living with his mother.

Those did not turn the series into an immediate hit, however. “When it went on the air, it was disregarded almost immediately,” Mr. Lorre said, noting the show’s respectful but not great reviews. Then, a few weeks into its first season, came the second near-death experience — the writers’ strike shut down production for three months. Once the strike ended, CBS moved the series from its 8:30 time slot to 8, leading off its Monday-night lineup — an especially tough position for a first-year comedy.

The series stayed there in its second season, performing admirably. Then in February, on a night when a presidential news conference interrupted its regular time slot, CBS scheduled an episode of “Big Bang” at 9:30, after “Two and a Half Men.” The ratings were so promising, said Kelly Kahl, a CBS senior executive vice president for prime time, that the arrangement was made permanent.

This season the series has also been enjoying the publicity around the Emmy nomination for Mr. Parsons, as best actor in a comedy.

“It’s been such a healthy climb the first two seasons,” Mr. Parsons said. He also said he thought that the show had much potential to grow. “I feel like there’s still a strong segment out there that may not be sold on the concept of four nerds and the pretty girl next door,” he said. “I get that. I think there’s a lot more going on that doesn’t really fit in that description. It really doesn’t tell you 10 percent of why you would be interested, truly.”