Sometimes real accidents prevent actors from appearing in projects – for example in “The Big Bang Theory”. Kaley Cuoco missed two episodes as Penny due to a real (and very serious) injury she sustained while horseback riding. According to Jessica Radloff’s book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” which hits shelves in 2022, Cuoco and her co-star Johnny Galecki, who plays Penny’s on-again, off-again love interest Leonard Hofstadter in the series planned a prank where they would stage a fake punch. Unfortunately for literally everyoneit went terribly wrong.
The prank in question takes place in the season six episode “The Tangible Affection Proof,” in which a seriously upset Penny has dinner on Valentine’s Day with Leonard and her friends Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch) and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg). “We were shooting this scene where Leonard and Penny get into an argument at the table, and we told first AD Anthony Rich that we had a prank and we were going to do it,” Cuoco recalled to Radloff. “That wouldn’t be funny today, but it was really funny back then – or at least we thought so – when our argument got really heated and Johnny faked punching me and I almost fell off camera So we do it and it gets really intense, and Johnny comes up to me and…”
“And it ended up under the table,” Galecki continued. “And then I started pretending to kick her in the face.”
Rauch added that Cucco “got up from the table with blood on his head, I thought for a second it was fake blood.” The blood, as it turned out, was not fake at all.
Kaley Cuoco and Johnny Galecki’s fake punch went horribly wrong on The Big Bang Theory
As Kaley Cuoco told Jessica Radloff, at first no one noticed anything was wrong at all – they even laughed at the well-staged prank – until she got up from the table and was bleeding quite strong.
Director Mark Cendrowski rightly pointed out that cuts on a person’s head or face can bleed quite a lotso things were looking very, very bad at the moment – and to make matters worse, production wasn’t even able to work around the problem. “Any cut on the head bleeds a lot more, but she was cut right under the eyebrow,” Cendrowski remembers. “It immediately started to swell, so we got pressure and ice on it; the makeup team even tried to cover it up but it kept bleeding. We were just trying to joke, but boy did we go too far.”
After all, that prank on The Big Bang Theory actually sent Kaley Cuoco to the hospital
Okay, that all sounds pretty bad – and from then on it was worse! Kaley Cuoco told Jessica Radloff that not only was she bleeding profusely, but she also showed no signs of slowing down. “It wouldn’t stop bleeding!” Cuoco recalled. “At 7pm I had to go to a plastic surgeon so he could stitch it up. The next day on set there were all these signs saying, ‘No more jokes! No more robberies!’ I mean, we thought it was so funny, but no one else did. And then we had to re-block the scene on the couch after me and Leonard were at dinner, so we let my bangs down to cover the seams so you couldn’t see what had happened, and the whole thing was a total Nightmare.
The fact that the crew put up signs saying no one was allowed to prank or “hook” anymore is admittedly pretty funny – even if it’s a lot more serious than some of the show’s other “rules.” This also meant that the men were not allowed to grow beards during filming — but according to Mark Cendrowski, creating the episode after Cuoco’s injury was a total ordeal… because the actress’ battle scars were so clearly visible. Not only that, but Cendrowski also said that the episode was ultimately required Special effects. “Yeah, I tried not to film her right away when we were able to film again the next day because you could see the swelling,” Cendrowski revealed, adding that any swelling was addressed in post-production.
The Big Bang Theory is now streaming on Max. So check out “The Tangible Affection Proof” and see if you can spot any strange aspects based on Cuoco’s injury.
