“The Big Bang Theory” ended in 2019, we’ve learned some fairly wild things about each cast member’s specific acting process. Simon Helberg, who plays Howard Wolowitz on the series, liked to run around screaming before he started filming, and while playing Sheldon Cooper, Jim Parsons wrote some of his particularly dense scientific speeches down onto index cards and stuck them around the set. So what did Johnny Galecki, the man behind Leonard Hofstadter — best friend to Sheldon and eventual husband of Penny (Kaley Cuoco) — do to prepare? He kept a huge binder of notes, and apparently, he figured out some plot points ahead of time. Speaking to Jessica Radloff in her 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” Galecki explained his mysterious binder … and said Cuoco thought the whole thing was hilarious.
“I still have my first few scripts and all the backstory of notes in a binder that I wrote, which to anyone else would look like hieroglyphics,” Galecki told Radloff. “It was a very Leonard-like binder with a Chewbacca sticker on it. I showed it to [writer and executive producer] Steve Molaro, and it was really creepy how accurate things turned out to be.” So what did Galecki accidentally predict?
“I wrote about Leonard’s relationship with his mother even though she wasn’t introduced until season 2,” Galecki clarified, referring to the imperious and haughty Dr. Beverly Hofstadter (Christine Baranski), a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who spent Leonard’s childhood analyzing her son for her own work. “Some things I got right, and other things were just funny.” (Galecki did not clarify further on that.)
Galecki claims that Cuoco was particularly fascinated by his character binder … but for a specific reason. “Kaley always used to make fun of my binder. Those were my secrets, my private foundation for the character,” Galecki explained before saying that a lot of the binder was devoted to Leonard’s relationship with Penny. “Half of those backstory notes were love letters to Penny. I think that’s what Kaley got a kick out of … the obsession, the loving obsession that Leonard had.”
