Four years ago, with “The big bang theory‘ one of the most successful sitcoms of all time is saying goodbye to the screen – at the peak of its popularity. But Jim Parsons left CBS no choice: he wanted to take on other challenges – his movie career, for example. The actor, who will probably always be Sheldon Cooper for many fans, recently landed his first major movie role with “Spoiler Alert.”
However, neither CBS nor the other contestants knew from the start that “The Big Bang Theory” would be such a resounding success. The broadcaster found the original pilot episode anything but convincing. Still, executive producers Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady got a second chance — and filmed a new pilot. The rest is TV history…
But what about the first pilot? If you want, you can watch it on YouTube – and find out for yourself that the series was originally intended to have a completely different tone. That was partly because of the script, but also because of the cast. Because Sheldon and Leonard’s famous neighbor wasn’t played by Kaley Cuoco (who would end up making a million dollars an episode for her role as Penny) in the rejected opening episode, but by Amanda Walsh. And her name wasn’t Penny, it was Katie.
However, not only the actress and the role name differed greatly from the version we know today, but also her character. Cuoco even auditioned for the part, too — but at least on the first try, the 37-year-old wasn’t chosen.
The fact that Walsh did not work as Katie in the context of the series is not due to the actress, but to the concept: “A smart, tough woman with a hard nose and a vulnerable inner side,” was Katie’s intention. “She was a wreck,” co-creator Chuck Lorre emphasizes the character alignment in a DVD bonus feature. “It took us a while to understand that if there was a woman in Sheldon and Leonard’s ecosystem, she had to be nice to them, because Sheldon and Leonard are the vulnerable ones.”
How did Amanda Walsh deal with the disappointment?
But those aren’t the only changes Lorre and Prady made from the first draft. So Sheldon was a much more open-minded character in the old version, and there was also a character named Gilda (Iris Bahr), from whom the character of Amy was later developed. Howard and Raj, on the other hand, only got there on the second try.
Despite the setback, Amanda Walsh has continued to work as an actress (most recently appearing in two episodes of the Canadian police series Pretty Hard Cases), but her big hit is yet to come. In Jessica Radloff’s book, The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive Inside Story Of The Epis Hit Series, Walsh spoke candidly about her experience. The actress admits she was disappointed, but at the same time expressed understanding for the decision.
“You wait for the series to continue and you can travel to New York at any time — it’s been 24 crazy hours,” the 41-year-old recalled. “Then I found out that ‘The Big Bang Theory’ was going to be remade, but with a new character and without me. As an actress you never want to get a call like that, but Bill [Prady] was as nice as I could about the whole thing. And then I was very lucky to be hired a year later (…) for another pilot called ‘The Mastersons Of Manhattan’ starring Molly Shannon and Natasha Richardson. For me that was a real confirmation of the thought: ‘It’s not you!’”
A little extra consolation: In the first season of “The Big Bang Theory,” Walsh got a small cameo – as Katie!