A long-running series coming to an end is never a nice thing to experience, especially when the show was such a prime-time powerhouse like The Big Bang Theory was.
A new tell-all book has all the main cast members looking back on the moment they learned the show would be entering its final season, which all began due to Jim Parsons deciding he was done playing Sheldon.
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Fans of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ have been learning a lot lately.
All thanks to the release of a book called T he Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series , which is an oral history of the series written by journalist Jessica Radloff.
One of the more emotional aspects covered in the book is the show’s ending.
Johnny Galecki recalled the moment Jim Parsons announced he was leaving.
He said he witnessed his costars “emotionally crumble” with the news that season 12 would be the last that featured Parsons, and eventually, the last season of the show entirely.
Parsons believed it “was not out of the realm of possibility” for the show to continue on without him.
The showrunner, Steve Molaro, thought otherwise.
“There was never a question about continuing on without him. The show was this ensemble and the thought of doing some strange version without him didn’t seem right.”
Thus the series came to an end with season 12.
The group announcement was an emotional one.
With Parsons telling everyone he was leaving and then Molaro saying it’d be the end of the series, it had people in tears.
“There was a lot of crying in the room,” said the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre, “Kaley [Cuoco] in particular. It was a blow. And there was no way to soften it by giving them a heads-up. I didn’t know any other way to do it.”
Cuoco confirmed that she was stunned.
“The shock of, Oh my God, what is next? was scary. I mean, we cried for hours that day,” she said, “We thought we were going to do another year, so all of the sudden your life kind of flashes before your eyes.”
Galecki felt much the same way.
As he explained to Radloff, “I was shocked. We were just blindsided that day. And not necessarily shocked by Jim’s decision, but that he hadn’t had that conversation with his castmates first to prepare us.”
He added it was “tearing me to shreds watching Kaley break down and see the tears from everyone.”
And, of course, the rest of the cast got emotional too.
Kunal Nayyar recalled having “a very physical reaction in my body,” explaining that he felt “something within me was released. At that moment I said goodbye.”
Mayim Bialik said that “everything happens the way it’s supposed to, and everything unfolds the way it’s supposed to according to a plan that we can’t know. I really tried to be in acceptance of that.”
Melissa Rauch really felt for Parsons during that time.
She called it a “vulnerable moment” for him.”[…] I saw how difficult it was for him as he was telling us how he felt, but Jim was so sweet about it and spoke from the heart, and it was totally understandable that he was ready to move on.”
Simon Helberg wasn’t really surprised by Parson’s announcement.
He was more shocked at how sudden everything was. “In terms of the actual, I guess what you could call the cancellation of the show […] That’s what I found to be the most upsetting,” he explained. “Jim didn’t cancel our show. Jim just finished the run of our show as we all did, contractually, and no one ever asked us to continue doing the show. That is not an exaggeration.”
It being an emotional moment for the cast is no surprise.
After all, they’d been filming this show together for over a decade! Thankfully, they all seem to have found success after the show’s ending, and hopefully they’re all still friends too!
h/t: People
