Kaley Cuoco established herself as a recognized A-list actor with her 12-year spell as Penny on The Big Bang Theory. Those were the heady days for her as a paid professional, when she started to earn an incredible $1 million per episode of the CBS sitcom.
Since the conclusion of the series in 2019, Cuoco has continued to advance her acting career. She voices the main character in the DC animated superhero drama, Harley Quinn on HBO Max. She is also currently filming an action-comedy film called The Man from Toronto alongside Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson.
Most notably, the 35-year-old has also been playing the main role in the thriller series called The Flight Attendant, also streaming on HBO Max. This is definitely a much more intense experience than she was used to on Big Bang, as evidenced by the difficulty she endured in shooting an intimate scene on the new show.
Primary Driving Force
The IMDb synopsis for The Flight Attendant reads, 'A reckless flight attendant with an alcoholism problem wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man - and no idea what happened. Unable to piece the night together, she begins to wonder if she could be the killer.'
The show was developed for HBO Max by screenwriter Steve Yockey, who adopted the story from the 2018 novel by Armenian-American author, Chris Bohjalian. It is the first major project that Cuoco has undertaken as the primary driving force: in 2017, as her tenure on Big Bang came to an end, she launched her own production company and quickly optioned rights for the novel.
Soon after the birth of her Yes, Norman Productions, the company signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. TV, the umbrella studio responsible for Big Bang, and the architects of HBO Max. The actress - and now exec - was over the moon at the opportunity to continue working with the outfit to produce this passion project.
"I read The Flight Attendant and was hooked immediately!" she said. "Warner Bros. Television is my extended family and I'm so excited to work together and bring this amazing book to life with them."
Completely Different Kettle Of Fish
Cuoco plays the headline character Cassie Bowden, who is described as 'a reckless alcoholic who drinks during flights and spends her time having sex with strangers, including her passengers.'
She was already used to getting up close and personal in some Big Bang scenes, but she would quickly discover that The Flight Attendant was a completely different kettle of fish. In an interview that she did with USA Today during last year's pandemic lockdown, she revealed just how stark the difference was between shooting 'light' sex scenes for a sitcom and creating much more realistic scenarios.
"Network 8 o'clock TV is a little different than HBO Max all hours of the night. I had scenes like that on Big Bang, but this was like a true sex scene," she said. Her first instinct was to look to her co-star, Dutch actor Michiel Huisman for help. "I told Michiel, 'I've never done this before. Have you done it before?' He goes, 'Yeah, like 30, 40 times.' And I was like, 'What?!'"
Huisman plays a character called Alex Sokolov, who starts out as a passenger-turned-lover on Cassie Bowden's plane.
Eventually Found Her Way Through
Things apparently got so bad, that Huisman had to just take matters into his own hands and teach Cuoco how to perform a fake intimate scene. "When they called action, I still wasn't really giving my all," the actress continued. "Michiel finally goes, 'It looks like you're hovering over a public toilet. What are you doing?' I'm like, 'I don't know what I'm doing.' So he had to awkwardly teach me how to have fake sex."
Cuoco eventually managed to find her way through the scene - and all those that followed for that matter. The first season of the show contained a total of eight episodes, the final of which was released on December 17, 2020. The Flight Attendant was extremely well received by audiences and critics alike. It was renewed for a second season, which will premiere in 2022.
A Rolling Stone review of the series highlights the power that Cuoco now possesses post Big Bang. 'Big Bang syndication money means she has the privilege of taking only the jobs that interest her,' the analysis states.
'She has long since ceased being the object and has instead become the person in control of her roles. She's off to an excellent start with whatever she wants to do with that power.'