Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty; CBS
When season 8 ofThe Big Bang Theorypremiered in 2014, fans were thrown for a loop whenKaley Cuoco’s character, Penny, suddenly had a pixie cut.
Since the show’s premiere in 2007, Cuoco had almost exclusively had long blonde hair, but after cutting it short for a movie role ahead of season 8, her character had to come along on the hair journey with her.
At the time, Cuoco, 36, thought the haircut would save time in the hair and makeup chair at work onThe Big Bang Theoryand that it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal.
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Cuoco went on to say that her decision to cut her hair “bit” her “in the a–” because it took so much longer to style her short hair than it did to style her long locks.
“I was like, this is the worst decision! What was I thinking?! I thought I was cutting off all this time, because I hated going in and getting ready,” she said. “That’s why I was wearing my hair up so much in season six and seven. So then I cut it and it ended up being more work because it wasn’t easy to style.”
What made Cuoco’s haircut so much more of a big deal was that no one on set knew it was coming — she just showed up for the season 7 wrap party with it. Though she’d gone short (and shorter), the pixie cut was a first, and the show’s co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre wasn’t thrilled with the surprise.
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Though Lorre admitted that the haircut was a “small one” in terms of “bumps in the road,” he said he was cognizant of how much a drastic hair change can affect a show. He mentioned how “ratings dropped” onDharma & Gregwhen Jenna Elfman, who played the lead role, cut her hair off, as well asFelicitywhen Keri Russell cut her hair.
At the start of season 8 of the show, Cuoco’s character Penny was supposed to be starting a new job as a pharmaceutical rep, so she said in the book that the haircut made sense to her for this career change.
But despite the haircut being such a topic of discussion, Cuoco did, in fact, really like it.
“I had fun with it,” she said. “I’m sure it was being negatively talked about all over the place, but I didn’t pay as much attention to what people were saying on social media then.” Cuoco noted that she knew there would be “haters,” saying, “Welcome to the business!”
source: people.com
