Big Bang Theory Scenes The Actors Had A Hard Time Filming

Acting can be a mentally and physically demanding profession, one that isn't devoid of its fair share of good and bad days. Such was the case for the cast of the popular CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," which ran for 279 episodes spanning 12 years. The show follows the romantic and social misadventures of four scientists and pop culture geeks, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Raj (Kunal Nayyar), and Howard (Simon Helberg), joined by their neighbor Penny (Kaley Cuoco), with later seasons introducing Amy (Mayim Bialik) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch).

Though the cast members became some of the highest-paid television actors ever in the show's later seasons, with Parsons, Cuoco, and Galecki taking home massive paychecks of $1 million each per episode by season 10, that doesn't bar them from the challenges people generally face at their workplaces. However, that does leave some juicy behind-the-scenes deets and intriguing anecdotes for the actors to share with journalists and fans. From having to perform uncomfortable scenes, secret love affairs, and on-set tensions to personal injuries and logistical complications, here are some scenes in "The Big Bang Theory" that gave the actors a hard time during filming.

While filming a kissing scene with your crush can be difficult, it comes nowhere close to being as difficult and awkward as shooting multiple intimate scenes with an ex. 

Speaking with Dax Shepard on his "Armchair Expert" podcast, Cuoco talked about how she and Johnny Galecki, who had then just recently broken up, suddenly found themselves shooting a barrage of sex scenes together. The two pulled through not just because of their consummate professionalism but also because they had ended their relationship on good terms and maintained their friendship.

However, Cuoco was convinced that "Big Bang" creator Chuck Lorre added these scenes to mess with the former couple. "When we broke up, obviously it was a little sensitive for a minute, but I remember those weeks that Chuck had written these episodes where all of a sudden our characters were like sleeping together every other second," Cuoco told Shepard.

She continued, "Johnny and I talk about it, and I think [Chuck] did that on purpose just to f*** with us ... Because that came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, these characters were all up on each other."

In one of the show's most memorable scenes, Sheldon teaches Raj an expanded version of "Rock-Paper-Scissors" named "Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock." In the Season 2 episode "The Lizard-Spock Expansion," Sheldon fluidly explains the entire game in a single go with hand gestures mimicking each variable.

However, the scene took Jim Parsons multiple takes to pull off; the actor struggled to memorize the sequence of the game's rather complicated rules, as seen in the blooper reel. After messing up the first take, Parsons breaks character by exclaiming, "Oh gosh, I messed up!" to which director Mark Cendrowski responds, "It's very simple." Parsons tells him, "It's not as simple as you think, Mark."

When asked by Entertainment Weekly if Parsons was tired of strangers asking to play the game with him, Parsons answered, "I'm not tired at all! Mainly because I can't do it. I think people are tired of me being such a let-down when they want to hear about it or, God forbid, play it. Honestly, that was one of the hardest things I've ever had to memorize. It somehow doesn't compute in my brain. I hate to say that must mean that it doesn't mean anything to me, but I'm afraid that it really doesn't mean very much to me."

When Bernadette told Howard, "I'm gonna be washing paint out of my Smurf for a month!" she wasn't kidding. For context, in Season 6, Episode 5 — "The Holographic Excitation," Howard and Bernadette dress up as Smurfs for Stuart's Halloween party at his comic book store, painting themselves blue from head to toe.

At a Paley Center for Media convention, Simon Helberg and Melissa Rauch revealed how painstaking and time-consuming it was to remove the paint from their bodies after the shoot. Helberg was done before Rauch, who was aided by her regular makeup artist and two assistants using hot towels to remove the blue paint.

Rauch said, "It was getting late, and I'm starting to fall asleep ... and I lifted my legs up to get the rest of the makeup off and heard the guy laugh and thought, 'Oh, they're just telling jokes' and I looked in the mirror and thought, 'What's that?! Dear lord Jesus, that's my business!' I had totally exposed myself! I put my legs down and just said to them, 'Long night!'" The actress finished the anecdote with, "That is the tale of my Smurfette," garnering laughs from the audience.

In "The Big Bang Theory" Season 6, Howard gets an opportunity from NASA to go to space to install a telescope he invented on the International Space Station. However, much like how Howard faces his share of difficulties in space, shooting the scenes was no easy feat for Simon Helberg.

At a Paley Center for Media panel, Helberg revealed how, despite not shooting in actual space, the crew sold the illusion of the character floating in zero gravity by building a seesaw-like contraption with a bicycle seat in the middle for him to sit on, which was removed from the shots through visual effects. Helberg said, "I was sitting on basically like a bicycle seat. Really, I feel for the cyclists out there, yet I don't feel because it really numbed me below the waist at a certain point ... And then there were some teamster guys — it was like a seesaw — who are lifting me and pulling me. The rest of it was just the body movements of floating."

Unlike Sheldon, who never misses an opportunity to mock Howard, Jim Parsons was quick to give his co-star credit for the performance. "Everything about [Helberg's] 'antigravity movement,' if that's what it's called, was completely him. Absolutely astounding," he said, with the other cast members agreeing.

In 2010, Kaley Cuoco, a fervent equestrian, experienced a horrific accident while horse-riding, leaving her with a broken leg at risk of getting amputated, an experience the actress detailed on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." Thankfully, her doctors treated the injury, but the treatment left Cuoco with a noticeable cast on her leg.

As a result, the actress missed shooting two episodes of "The Big Bang Theory," and the writers decided to work around the injury by making Penny a bartender. In "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story," series creator Chuck Lorre revealed, "We made [Cuoco] a bartender instead of a waitress, so she was behind the bar. She stood behind couches, or she was seated, and we made it as easy as possible."

Author Jessica Radloff shared with ET that the crew had to employ a stunt double just for a scene where Penny runs back to her room. "It's the one time she had a stunt double. Kaley talks about it [in the book]. She's like, 'You can kind of tell, but that is not me running back into my room because I wasn't able to do it.' A fun little Easter egg."

Anxiety affects even the most capable actors, including some "Big Bang Theory" stars who had to tackle their struggles while playing their iconic characters. 

In "​​The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story," Jim Parsons revealed how his meticulous process of learning Sheldon's lines in the show's early years aggravated his anxiety. Parsons detailed how his now-husband's proposal for a surprise vacation threw the actor off, saying, "I was just like, 'You people have lost your f***ing minds! I have to stay here and practice. I have to be ready whenever I feel the moment comes to be able to go through these lines again ... In the end, I took all the stuff with me to Montecito, and that was the first time I didn't spend as many hours as I normally forced myself to be comfortable with the material. And it went just fine."

On an episode of "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown," Mayim Bialik and Kevin Sussman opened up about their struggles with anxiety and how it affected their careers. Bialik told Sussman, "With acting stuff, my level of anxiety surrounding performing is very, very high. It's a high level of anxiety ... And when I've tried to do things like improv — things that are very, kind of, free form, I freeze. I literally freeze. It's like an instant knot in your throat ... it's stuck, and there are tears there. Like, I want to cry."

Likewise, Sussman admitted, "I tenaciously guard any preparation time that I can get ... It's less getting up in front of people. That's not what creates the anxiety for me. It's feeling unprepared."