Not every character on The Big Bang Theory gets a particularly great ending, and according to actress Kaley Cuoco, Penny is no exception.
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00:00Not every character on The Big Bang Theory gets a particularly great ending.
00:05And according to actress Kaley Cuoco, Penny is no exception.
00:09At the end of The Big Bang Theory, Leonard and Penny Hofstadter reveal that they're expecting a baby.
00:14I'm pregnant, Sheldon.
00:17This sounds great, but there's one problem.
00:20Throughout the entirety of The Big Bang Theory, Penny is adamant about not wanting kids.
00:26Hey, Leonard, remember yesterday when we were talking about having kids someday?
00:29Yeah.
00:30Well, what if it wasn't someday?
00:33So what does Cuoco think about Penny's ending?
00:36Well, she doesn't exactly love it.
00:38As she told Jessica Radloff in the 2022 book The Big Bang Theory,
00:41the definitive inside story of the epic hit series,
00:44she was against it because she felt like Penny represented women across the world who choose not to have children.
00:50She said in the book,
00:52I actually wish that they did not make Penny pregnant because I love that message so much.
00:56It was cute how the writers did it at the end with Penny's surprise pregnancy.
01:00And all in all, I'm glad.
01:02But I was actually voting for her not to.
01:04I love that she was like, no, I don't really want them.
01:07What if we didn't have kids?
01:10Ever?
01:11I mean, our life is so great.
01:13Why would we want to change that?
01:15Cuoco felt similarly about her own life at the time.
01:17She continued,
01:18I didn't want an episode where all of a sudden she'd say, no, I want a baby.
01:22Not everyone wants kids.
01:24Not everyone wants to be married.
01:26And I like that.
01:27It didn't need to be a perfect Leonard and Penny ending.
01:30But in a way, for them, it was.
01:32The creative team behind The Big Bang Theory empathized with Cuoco.
01:36Executive producer Steve Holland told Jessica Radloff in the book that he understands how Cuoco felt about the whole thing.
01:42And he actually sort of agrees with her, saying,
01:44I wish we had earned it a little bit more, getting to that reveal.
01:48People were like, why does she have to?
01:50Why can't she be OK without kids?
01:52And those are perfectly legitimate feelings.
01:54It sort of comes with the time jump we did in the finale.
01:57But we talked about whether there were other ways to do it.
01:59Like what if she had a pregnancy scare that turned out to be false and she was disappointed?
02:04Holland also acknowledged that the news of Penny's pregnancy breaks during the series finale,
02:08which has a lot of other stuff going on.
02:10He recalled,
02:11We talked about ways to get her to that moment that didn't feel quite so abrupt.
02:15I wish we had Penny take one more step before we got to the finale.
02:20The way the last episodes broke out, we just didn't get there.
02:23The pregnancy also calls back to a line that Leonard says when he first meets Penny.
02:27Executive producer Steve Malaro said,
02:30Our babies will be smart and beautiful.
02:33Malaro said in the book,
02:35It was such an early structural piece of the entire series.
02:38At the same time, we still tried to honor her feelings about having been against it earlier in the season since the pregnancy wasn't planned.
02:46What happened to I'm never gonna have kids?
02:48It was an accident. I went out drinking with Sheldon.
02:51Despite her reservations, Cuoco said that by the time they shot the show's final scene, she was at peace with everything.
02:57She told Radloff,
02:58To end the show around the table eating Chinese food the same way we started our show was unbelievable.
03:03So to then end it like that, sitting next to Leonard and him touching Penny's stomach, it was the perfect cap.
03:09I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
03:15You