News culture She should have been the star of the series The Big Bang Theory, but she was fired after the pilot episode
Published on 03/26/2024 at 10:20
Share :
Before being definitively launched, a series must generally have a pilot episode which lays the foundations of the program. And it sometimes happens that there is a gap between the pilot episode and the final series broadcast on screens. An actress had the bitter experience…
The Big Bang Theory, la série culte
The simple mention of the series The Big Bang Theory is enough to bring back tons of memories. Born in 2007 and broadcast for more than a decade, the series with 279 episodes has won over an ultra-wide audience. The program tells the misadventures of four scientific friends with very different temperaments: Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Howard Walowitz (Simon Helberg) and Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar). Sheldon and Leonard live together and regularly receive their classmates. Across the street from their apartment is the beautiful Penny, a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory, who dreams of becoming a singer.
The geeky and totally uninhibited humor of the series collides with Penny's common sense and intelligence, resulting in an absolutely unique sitcom. References to video games, science and other technological fields are legion and we have fun at the antics of the quartet with, at the top of the bill, a Sheldon who will die of laughter. The other characters are also colorful (with Raj who has a pathological fear of talking to women) and we have a wonderful time watching this program. Broadcast for the last time in May 2019 in the United States, after twelve years of audience success, the series left a big void in the hearts of fans.
A series that could have been very different
It's already been five long years since the series The Big Bang Theory and if it left a gaping hole in the world of television and sitcoms, it almost never saw the light of day! As Allociné so rightly points out, CBS completely rejected the original episode, believing that it did not fit with its editorial programming line. Without the motivation of producers Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, The Big Bang Theory would have boomed even before the first broadcast. Concretely, the two men fought so that the management of CBS would allow them the possibility of shooting a second pilot episode, in order to improve all aspects of the original pilot. And in fact, this original pilot, which we rediscover on YouTube, reveals that the series was quite different in tone, in addition to not offering the same characters!
Indeed, in the original pilot, The Big Bang Theory featured Sheldon and Leonard who played opposite… Katie. The character, much more haughty and impolite, ultimately did not correspond to what the producers expected. There was a tone that didn't fit with the whole thing, especially in the face of the antics of the duo and their cronies. Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre then made the difficult choice to oust the actress who played Katie: Amanda Walsh. For the latter, who had appeared in Smallville and Veronica Mars, it was a shock, but she managed to bounce back on another series. But where the story gets funny is that Kaley Cuoco, who plays the role of Penny in the final series, had auditioned for Katie! You will have understood, the two producers made an about-face and hastened to recall Kaley Cuoco who could perfectly correspond to Penny. Pretty fun, right? Allociné also recalls that the series has undergone other major changes, such as the eviction of another character (Gilda) or the change in Sheldon's personality. The series can be streamed on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
About Netflix
Tutorial
Netflix: here is the method to add a missing film on the platform
News culture
Netflix is hiding things from you, here's a secret menu to unblock hundreds of movies and it's legal
News culture
Tired of paying for Netflix, Amazon and Disney+? Here are 8 free alternatives… and legal!