5 Actors Who Were Almost Cast As The Big Bang Theory’s Penny Before Kaley Cuoco

Fans of “The Big Bang Theory” know that, for twelve seasons and the same number of years, Kaley Cuoco brought some much-needed levity to the role of Penny, the beautiful and outgoing aspiring actress who moves into the apartment across the hall from Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki). Penny is basically an audience surrogate who hangs out with a group of intensely nerdy guys with a ton of esoteric knowledge about science and pop culture. 

As the resident “normie,” Penny translates their nonsense for the viewers and, within the universe of the show, helps all of the guys evolve. Leonard, Penny’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, is a much better person after he spends years as Penny’s partner. Penny ultimately breaks Sheldon’s barriers down to the point where he considers her one of his best friends in the world. When Penny first meets Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), he’s a lecherous, irritating guy; after she introduces him to his future wife Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), Howard grows up. Even Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar), who can’t even speak around Penny at first due to debilitating nervousness, is changed for the better, becoming one of Penny’s closest confidantes.

Penny’s impact on “The Big Bang Theory” is due in large part to Cuoco’s funny, lived-in, and honest portrayal of the character, so it might be surprising to learn that a bunch of people were considered before Cuoco was finally cast — including an actress who filmed an entire pilot episode for the series that ultimately got scrapped. Here are five actors who almost played Penny on “The Big Bang Theory.”

You might be surprised to learn that Academy Award winning actress Marisa Tomei almost played Penny in “The Big Bang Theory,” but it’s true! As Tomei told Business Insider in 2022, “I thought it was a great script, and that’s why we went so far as to check it out. And it’s such an iconic kind of setup, all those archetypes, the scientists, and then the kind of little hottie and the whole thing.” Still, she ended up passing on it: “I certainly didn’t know it was going to go on that long. It wasn’t really the right fit for me at the time, but I really did enjoy the script itself.”

The process went further than you might think, though. In Jessica Radloff’s book from the same year, “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” Jim Parsons revealed he even read with Tomei. After saying he knew he already had the role of Sheldon, Parsons told Radloff:

“I read with Marisa Tomei. Johnny [Galecki] was cast by then, but he was doing a play in New York. I had come back to read with her. I remember going to the snack room after we were done and telling Ken [Miller, a casting director] and Nikki [Valko, another casting director], ‘I’ve never been in someone else’s audition before!’ And they said, ‘Well, she was kind of really auditioning you.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’ But oh my gosh, what a different world that would have been.”

As we all know, Tomei did just fine despite not playing Penny on “The Big Bang Theory.” Over the years, Tomei has appeared in Oscar fare like “The Wrestler,” huge romantic comedies like “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” and joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Aunt May to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, making her debut appearance in the 2016 crossover film “Captain America: Civil War.”

Back when people were still auditioning for the female lead on “The Big Bang Theory,” the character’s name was Katie (more on that shortly) and as co-creator Bill Prady recalled, Tara Reid went out for the role. Prady didn’t share anything else about Reid’s audition, but clearly, it didn’t work out … so what has Reid been doing since she auditioned for “The Big Bang Theory?”

After earning fame and acclaim for roles in films like “The Big Lebowski,” “American Pie,” and “Josie and the Pussycats,” Reid ended up appearing in several direct-to-video releases at the end of the aughts, including “If I Had Known I Was a Genius” and “Clean Break/Unnatural Causes.” Luckily, in 2013, a big break came in the form of “Sharknado,” the Syfy original movie that unexpectedly became a camp classic. She reprised her role of April Wexler in all six of the “Sharknado” movies and even appeared in “The Boys” in 2019 and “Ghosts” in 2023, playing herself in both.

By the time she went out for the role of Katie on “The Big Bang Theory” — which she did, according to Bill Prady’s interview in Jessica Radloff’s book — Elizabeth Berkley was already well-known for playing Jessie Spano on “Saved by the Bell,” starring in Paul Verhoeven’s now-reconsidered classic “Showgirls,” and movies like “The First Wives Club” and “Any Given Sunday.” According to Prady, “Elizabeth Berkley went to network for the role, too. She was terrific.” Clearly, Berkley didn’t book the role, but she kept acting anyway, finding success elsewhere on the small screen.

In 2008, Berkley joined the cast of “CSI: Miami” in the recurring role of Julia Winston from season 6 to 7. A year later, she booked another recurring role on “The L Word” during its sixth season as Kelly Wentworth. In the years that followed, Berkley appeared in shows like “New Girl” before joining the “Saved by the Bell” reboot to reprise her role as Jessie Spano from 2020 to 2021. She was supposed to play a role in HBO’s controversial series “The Idol,” but unfortunately, Berkley was part of the show’s original iteration led by Amy Seimetz, which ended up on the cutting room floor.

Here’s a wild story: Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, who played the mean popular girl Taylor Vaughan in the 1999 teen comedy “She’s All That,” was cast as Katie on “The Big Bang Theory” — and then suddenly fired. O’Keefe didn’t speak to Jessica Radloff for her book, but people involved with the show shared their recollections. Radloff notes that producers didn’t feel a lot of chemistry between O’Keefe, Johnny Galecki, and Jim Parsons, and as Parsons recalled, they were all heading out to dinner (with Iris Bahr, an actress cast in the role of Gilda which was ultimately cut) when Galecki called him and said O’Keefe had been let go. “I mean, we had just done the table read thirty minutes earlier. Johnny, Iris, and Jodi were already there when Jodi got a call from her agent saying she was being let go. I hadn’t done a ton of table reads in my career by that point, but I’m not an idiot — I know when someone’s not good. And Jodi was great. I was stunned.”

Casting director Nikki Valko offered an explanation: “Jodi Lyn O’Keefe was so good in the original pilot as Katie, but it was just a totally different character. [Jodi] brought a darkness, which just didn’t work, so she was replaced after the table read.” 

From there, the casting team had to find someone new in three days. O’Keefe ended up appearing on the show later as a sex worker who meets Howard in Las Vegas (in the season 2 episode “The Vegas Renormalization”), and she’s also popped up on TV shows like “Lost,” “Castle,” and “Lucifer.” You might also recognize her as Josette “Jo” Laughlin from the popular supernatural primetime soap “The Vampire Diaries.”

At this point, the original pilot of “The Big Bang Theory” is fairly infamous considering that it was so bad that it never made it to air, Unfortunately, actress Amanda Walsh was a casualty of that first attempt. After Jodi Lyn O’Keefe was let go, Walsh was hired promptly, but the role of Katie was so harshly written that even her committed performance couldn’t sell it to test audiences.

As Bill Prady told Entertainment Weekly in 2022, Walsh “did a great job playing that character” — meaning Katie, not Penny — and Chuck Lorre chimed in to say that the problems with the pilot and Katie’s character were their fault, not hers. “She was terrific in the role, but the role was misconceived,” Lorre admitted. “It was our responsibility.” 

So what was the problem? Apparently, test audiences just really hated her because they immediately felt protective of Sheldon and Leonard, both of whom Katie spends the pilot antagonizing. “Yeah, we didn’t realize early on that the audience viewed them as children,” Lorre said. “They were very naive and childlike, regardless of how intelligent they were. They were very vulnerable, and the audience didn’t want a toxic presence around them. That’s why we rewrote Katie to become Penny [Kaley Cuoco] and made her much more charmed by the guys and kind to them, as opposed to a woman who would take advantage of them.”

Prady also shared that Walsh wanted to audition for the re-tooled role of Penny, but it just didn’t work out, and Kaley Cuoco ended up playing Penny. For her part, Walsh went on to appear in shows like “Castle,” Lorre’s other hit series “Two and a Half Men,” and eventually, she became a writer on “Schitt’s Creek” — so all’s well that ends well. 

“The Big Bang Theory” is currently available to stream on Max.