Despite its final episode airing four years ago, The Big Bang Theory is still one of the most popular sitcoms of all time. During its twelve seasons, fans fell in love with this group of socially awkward and quirky friends and couldn’t get enough of them.
The success of the show even inspired its creators to make a spin-off series based on the like of Sheldon Cooper, which has also become a huge success.
Despite joining the cast of TBBT later on, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch’s characters soon became fan favorites. Although both Bialik and Rauch went on to have a great impact on the show, both actresses have revealed that joining the show during its third season was rough because they often fell distanced from the rest of the cast.
Mayim Bialik Only Auditioned For The Big Bang Theory To Get Health Insurance, While Melissa Rauch Was Only Supposed To Guest Star
During the 90s, Mayim Bialik was a successful child actor thanks to her leading role in the hit series Blossom. But she decided to take a break from acting to focus on her studies, which is how she got a Ph.D. in neuroscience. In 2010, she was cast to play neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory.
Bialik has admitted she only auditioned for TBBT to get health insurance. “I had a toddler and a newborn and I had been a grad student and my insurance was expiring. I figured if I can just get even a couple of jobs like here or there, I’ll be able to get insurance again.” So, she took the role without knowing how starring in this show would change her life and career for the best.
Most recently, Melissa Rauch has revealed that, originally, Bernadette was only meant to be a guest role. “I still don’t know that I fully process what that whole experience was. Right before I got cast as Bernadette, I was literally at the unemployment office the week before that job. I was just supposed to be there for the week, and then they said I was gonna do a couple of more episodes. The fact that it turned into that, I’m just so endlessly grateful,” she explained on the Jennifer Hudson Show.
After seeing potential in her character, the producers asked Rauch to reprise the role of Bernadette on several occasions and fans loved it. Ultimately, Rauch was promoted to a series regular during the fourth season of TBTT in 2010.
Mayim Bialik And Melissa Rauch Made About 80 Percent Less Than Their Big Bang Theory Co-Stars
Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch joined during the third season of The Big Bang Theory and only became series regulars during the show’s fourth season. Because of this, their salaries were about 80 percent less than that of their co-stars. Bialik and Rauch were each paid between $20,000 and $30,000 per episode when they first joined the cast of The Big Bang Theory while Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, and Jim Parsons, were making about $200,000 per episode.
Furthermore, in 2014, Parsons, Galecki, and Cuoco signed contracts worth $1 million per episode. Not long after that, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg made a deal to be paid the same amount per episode starting from the eighth season of the show. Around that time, Bialik and Rauch were only making around $200,000 per episode. So, their co-stars agreed to take a $100K pay cut to raise Bialik and Rauch’s wages to $450,000 per episode.
Melissa Rauch Once Had To Use Tape To Fix A Dress Herself For A Big Bang Theory Photoshoot
Because they joined The Big Bang Theory around the same time, Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch quickly became good friends. “Our dressing rooms were next door to each other, so there was a lot of just knocking on each other’s doors,” Rauch explained in an episode of Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown.
Bialik and Rauch bonded because they didn’t know what it was like to be on a show that was so big as The Big Bang Theory. A struggle they both shared was that they didn’t know how to dress or act on big events, unlike their co-stars, who were used to all of that.
“A lot of my memories of Big Bang [Theory] was like, me and Melissa learning together, like ‘Oh, there’s this thing called Spanx? Oh! Okay, we’re gonna wear those now’ or like, ‘False eyelashes, what?’,” Bialik revealed.
“I didn’t know you were supposed to go to a stylist. But I bought this, it was literally like I went to the Beverly Center and I bought a dress from Forever 21 for a big photo shoot, like a studio photoshoot with professional photographers, and I bought a dress for $19.99,” Rauch explained.
“On top of that, this is where it gets even crazier, it needed to be altered and rather than taking it to a professional, I duck-taped the bottom of it myself.”
