The Big Bang Theory prank that landed Kaley Cuoco in the hospital

Sometimes real-life incidents 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, plan to… The series is in for a joke where they will stage a fake punch. Unfortunately for Literally everyoneA terrible mistake has happened.

The prank in question takes place in the season six episode “The Tangible Affection Proof,” in which a very angry Penny has dinner on Valentine’s Day with Leonard and their friends Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch) and Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg). “We were shooting this scene where Leonard and Penny are arguing at the table, and Anthony Rich initially told us we had a joke, and we were going to do it,” Cuoco recalled to Radloff. “This wouldn’t be funny today, but it was really funny at the time — or at least we thought so — because our argument got so heated, and Johnny was fake punching me, and I almost fell off the camera. So we did that and it got more intense, and Johnny came over.” towards me, and…”

“And I got under the table,” Galecki continued. “Then I started pretending to step on her face.”

Rauch added that Coco “came out of the table with blood on her head, and for a moment I thought it was fake blood.” The blood, as it turned out, was Not fake at all.

As Kaley Cuoco told Jessica Radloff, no one noticed, at first, that anything was wrong at all — they were even laughing at the well-staged prank — until she got up from the table and was bleeding. completely Hardly.

Director Mark Cendrowski correctly pointed out that wounds to a person’s head or face can bleed Very muchso it looked pretty bad at that moment — and to make matters worse, production couldn’t even solve the problem. “Any head wounds bleed much worse, but she got a cut just below the eyebrow,” Cendrowski recalls. “Immediately it started swelling, so we compressed and iced it; the makeup team even tried to cover it up, but it kept bleeding. We were just trying to joke around, but boy, we went too far with that.”

Well, this all sounds pretty bad – and here it is worst! Kaley Cuoco told Jessica Radloff that not only was she bleeding a lot, but her flow showed no signs of slowing down at all. “The bleeding won’t stop!” Coco remembers. “At 7 p.m., I had to go to a plastic surgeon to have it stitched up. And the next day, there were all these signs on the set saying things like, ‘No more jokes!’ No more roughhouses!” I mean we thought it was pretty funny, but no one else did, and then we had to re-block the scene on the couch after Leonard and I were having dinner, and I was originally sitting facing him so we cut off my bangs. To cover up the stitches so you couldn’t see what happened, it was so embarrassing, the whole thing was a complete nightmare.

The fact that the crew has put up signs saying no one is allowed to play pranks or “tough stuff” anymore is pretty funny, though it’s more serious than some of the show’s other “rules.” Including that men are not supposed to grow beards while filming — but according to Mark Cendrowski, creating the episode after Coco’s injury was a complete pain… because the actress’ battle scars were so obvious. Not only that, but Cendrowski said the episode ultimately demands Special effects. “Yes, I tried to avoid shooting it directly when we were able to shoot again the next day because you could see the swelling,” Cendrowski revealed, adding that any swelling was fixed in post-production.

“The Big Bang Theory” is streaming on Max now, so go check out “The Tangible Affection Proof” and see if you can spot any weird angles thanks to Cuoco’s injury.