Penny (The Big Bang Theory)

Penny
Kaley Cuoco as Penny
First appearance	"Pilot"
Portrayed by	Kaley Cuoco
Information
Nickname(s)	"Bestie" (by Amy)
Occupation	Waitress Aspiring actress
Family	Wyatt (father) Unnamed sister Unnamed brother
Relatives	Unnamed nephew (13 years old during the second season)
Religion	Unknown
Nationality	American

Penny is a fictional character on the CBS television series The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by American actress Kaley Cuoco.

Penny is the primary female character on the show, befriending her across-the-hall neighbors Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), two physicists who work at the nearby Caltech University. Penny's lack of advanced education and outgoing personality drastically contrast the personalities of the primary male characters in the series, even though she is considered part of their group. She also is the love interest of Leonard, whom she dates during the third season.

Personality

Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Penny is a waitress at the local Cheesecake Factory with aspirations of becoming an actress. She is a Sagittarius, meaning she was born between November 22 and December 21. She has full confidence in horoscopes and often has arguments with Sheldon and Leonard about their accuracy.

In contrast to the rest of the group, Penny is not particularly intellectually gifted or savvy in a specific technical field, but she has great social skills and is very knowledgeable about pop culture. She is also messy and disorganized, but appears to like it that way.

While usually very kind, Penny has a bad temper which has erupted on many occasions, such as when Sheldon broke into her apartment to clean, when she confronted Howard over his "creepy" flirting, or when Sheldon "banished" her from their social group. Leonard has likened her to The Hulk when she gets angry, while Sheldon once said to his friend Stuart that she would "maul [him] like a rabid Wolverine" if Stuart woke her up.

Penny is a terrible driver (she ignores stop signs, drives too fast, fails to service her vehicle regularly, and has left her car's passenger side wing mirror "in a parking lot in Hollywood"). She also has a Chinese character tattooed on her right buttock, which, according to her, means "courage" (Chinese: 勇) but is revealed to mean "soup" (simplified Chinese: 汤; traditional Chinese: 湯) by Sheldon. She uses vanilla oil as perfume and snores badly (especially when on her back). Early in the series, she claimed to be vegetarian, with the exception of fish and the "occasional steak...I love steak!".

Friendship with Sheldon

For the most part, Penny cannot stand Leonard's roommate Sheldon Cooper, and the two of them have clashed several times. Actor Jim Parsons, who portrays Sheldon, described the characters as "polar opposites".

In one episode, Sheldon tries to "improve" Penny using chocolate, rewarding her for what he considers to be "correct behavior", as in operant conditioning with lab rats. As Sheldon observed, Penny will often call someone "sweetie" coupled with a thinly-veiled insult.

Despite this, at times Penny and Sheldon have shown to be good friends; Penny took care of Sheldon while he was ill and let him stay at her apartment when he was locked out of his; Sheldon lent money to Penny when she needed it and took care of her when she dislocated her shoulder. During a Christmas episode, Penny gave Sheldon a signed napkin used by Leonard Nimoy. In return, Sheldon gave Penny multiple baskets of bath products and then a long hug, to both her and Leonard's surprise. When Sheldon's World of Warcraft account was hacked, Penny kicked the hacker in the testicles.

Geek traits

Although Penny's personality usually contrasts to that of her nerdy friends, in the later episodes Penny has shown some of her own geekiness too, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Penny was surprisingly good the first time she played Halo 3, and camping at Sheldon's spawn location and killing him before he could move, which greatly aggravated him.

In one instance, Penny was critical of the guys' interests in toys and collectibles, but Sheldon retorted by noting her collection of stuffed bears and other such childish things (Hello Kitty, Beanie Babies, My Little Pony, etc.).

After Sheldon introduces her to the theory of Schrödinger's cat during the build up to her and Leonard's date as the climax to season 1, Penny attempts to reuse the metaphor with a new boyfriend in "The Codpiece Topology".

After a brief introduction to the game Age of Conan by Sheldon, Penny creates a character named Queen Penelope. Penny became addicted, to the point of ignoring her friends and calling Sheldon at all hours of the day for advice. She finally overcame her addiction when she realized she had agreed to go on a virtual "date" within the game with Howard.

After Alicia, a new tenant in the building, stole the boys' attention from her, Penny became jealous and tried to win over the boys again by making a physicist joke. To her own surprise, she even makes a casual reference to Star Trek while engaged in idle conversation.

In "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation", when attempting to console Sheldon (and failing miserably), she mentions events that occurred in the new Star Trek movie.

In "The Wheaton Recurrence," Penny quoted, "Do, or do not. There is no try" while in bed with Leonard, and even mentioned she knew it was from The Empire Strikes Back. Leonard was pleasantly shocked that he was "in bed with a beautiful woman who can quote Yoda," and for the first time told Penny that he loved her, which then led to their breakup.

In "The Apology Insufficiency," Penny had a chat with Sheldon and displayed knowledge of the Kobayashi Maru test, a plot device in Star Trek, impressing him.

In "The Love Car Displacement", Penny ends up sharing Leonard's bed and she tells him that as far as romantic activities go, below her waist, her shields are up alluding to the Star Trek defensive system.

Full name

Penny's last name has not been revealed, though co-creator Bill Prady stated that it eventually will be.

Legal issues and arrests

Penny has shown that she had several run-ins with the law. It is stated that she has several parking tickets that have yet to be paid. She also mentioned that she was arrested on a warrant for failure to appear in Nebraska. She had also said to Amy and Bernadette that she had once bullied a student who had better grades then her, by tying her up in a cornfield and leaving her, but she only considered it as a prank.

Family

Not a lot is mentioned about Penny's family, other than her father Wyatt (Keith Carradine) trying to raise her like a boy, but on her accounts they seem to be a dysfunctional family.

In an early episode, Penny talked to Raj about her sister having shot her brother-in-law. In another episode, Penny accompanied the guys to the comic book store to shop for a gift for her 13-year-old nephew. In another episode, Penny has an unwanted guest, Christy, staying with her who slept with her brother while engaged to her cousin, "so she's sort of family." Christy knows Penny from back in Omaha, and according to Penny she slept with nearly every man in the city, earning her the nickname "Whore of Omaha". While staying with Penny, Christy sleeps with Howard Wolowitz.

When Leonard's mother, neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, chatted with Penny, Penny tearfully revealed some of her childhood issues, such as being called "Slugger" by her father, whom she referred to as being named Bob, because he really wanted a son to play baseball with. This conversation affected Penny in such a way that she got drunk and almost ended up having sex with Leonard.

Near the beginning of Season 5, after Penny quickly ate the last dumpling, Sheldon made a comment to Penny saying, "I've seen pictures of your mother, keep eating." This implied that Penny's mother was currently obese. In a later part of the season, she had confessed to Bernadette that her mother smoked pot once while she was pregnant. While she said that she turned out great, it might've had an effect on her constant drinking.

Penny has mentioned having a brother on parole, who she says is "kind of a chemist." In another episode, when in a church with the guys and Sheldon's mother, she asks God to help her brother to stop cooking crystal meth.

Work

Penny's main job is as a waitress in the local Cheesecake Factory, although in the first season episode "The Grasshopper Experiment" she trained as a bartender. In 2010, when actress Kaley Cuoco broke her leg, Penny was shown working as a bartender in several season 4 episodes to hide the cast on her leg.

Penny considers herself a professional actress and constantly goes to castings, but often she is not successful or the role being auditioned turns out to be quite different from what she expected, as was the case when she thought she was auditioning for a cat food commercial and it instead turned out to be a casting for a pornographic film. In the season one episode "The Loobenfeld Decay," she is cast in a production of Rent, and in "The Terminator Decoupling" she refers to another of her roles as "Anne Frank in a theater above a bowling alley." In the Season 5 premiere, frustrated over her lack of success as an actress (as well as damaging what was left of her relationship with Leonard), she briefly considers returning to Nebraska until landing a part in a commercial for hemorrhoid cream.

When Penny was a child, she rebuilt a tractor engine on the farm and competed in a junior rodeo. She was also a member of the Corn Queen's Court at age 16.

Relationships

Unlike the rest of the main characters, Penny is very outgoing and assertive, and has many romantic relationships over the course of the series. In the fourth season opener, Sheldon uses probability calculations to estimate that Penny has dated almost 180 men since she started dating at age 14, and slept with "30.96" of them (he rounds it up to 31). Penny strongly denies it was ever that many.

In the first episode of the series, Penny moved in across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon because of her recent split with her boyfriend, Kurt, after four years. She said she still loved him even though he cheated on her. Kurt makes further appearances in the show trying to get back together with Penny, and is usually confronted by Leonard.

From the beginning, Leonard's infatuation with Penny becomes the major force that drives the series. Howard also shows interest in her (primarily carnal), but he is always rejected abruptly due to his overtly sexual approaches. Raj is secretly attracted to Penny as well, but does not interact with her a lot due to his inability to talk to women, like Penny, unless he is drunk. Although Penny rarely tries to talk to Raj, she does feel, and show, sympathy towards him. Sheldon is the only one of the four main male characters that appears romantically uninterested in her.

In an early episode, Penny described her approach after a failed relationship: she picks up an attractive man and then has meaningless sex over the course of 36 hours in a weekend, then she dumps him.

In the first season finale, Penny broke up with her boyfriend, after the latter posted intimate details about their sex life on his blog. This event gave Leonard the opportunity to ask her out on a first official date. Although the date was successful, Penny became worried after she lied to Leonard about graduating from community college (it is mentioned in a later episode, "The Cohabitation Formulation", that she was enrolled in one, but dropped out); when Sheldon asked her why she lied, she said she did not want Leonard to see her as a "stupid loser", to which Sheldon replied, "And you thought the opposite of 'stupid loser' was 'community college graduate'?" Leonard eventually learned the truth from a drugged Sheldon, but made matters worse when he tried to encourage Penny to enroll in Pasadena City College. Penny interpreted his suggestion as an insult to her intelligence, and they broke up.

Some time after, Penny's introduction to Leonard's mother, Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, caused Penny and Leonard to seek comfort in each other. They nearly have sex, but when Leonard comments that she was attracted to him because of a psychological need to be closer to her father, her revulsion at this causes her to rebuff him.

Afterwards, Penny dated Stuart, from the comic book store, but the dates did not end well. The first time, Penny and Stuart were interrupted by Sheldon. On another occasion, when Penny and Stuart were kissing, Penny mistakenly called him "Leonard".

It was in the second season finale that Penny finally showed strong romantic feelings for Leonard. When she discovered that Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj would be spending three months at the North Pole for a scientific experiment, she became sad and gave him a Snuggie and an unusually long hug, which Leonard described as lasting for "five Mississippis". Leonard asked her what all this attention meant and she lightly dismissed it. After Leonard left, she sighed and said to herself that it meant that she didn't want him to leave.

In the third season premiere, after the guys returned from the expedition, Penny kissed Leonard right when he arrived at her door and later the two of them had sex for the first time. Initially, Leonard and Penny felt uncomfortable with their new relationship, and they agreed to remain only friends, but were unable to maintain this resolution, and remained a couple. Their relationship soured, however, when Leonard told Penny he loved her for the first time, and an unsure Penny simply replied, "Thank you." This tension, heightened due to comments by Wil Wheaton to Penny about regretting having been in a similar situation, eventually caused Penny and Leonard to break up for a second time. They do remain friends, however, and sleep together once after breaking up, after Penny gets drunk following a bad date with Zack Johnson, and realizes Leonard ruined her ability to date unintelligent men. This only caused more confusion about the status of the relationship for Leonard, however.

According to Sheldon's calculation, Penny has had sex with over thirty guys, a conclusion that Penny disagrees with. In Season 4's "The 21-Second Excitation," Penny reveals to her friends Bernadette Rostenkowski and Amy Farrah Fowler during a "Truth or Dare?" game that she has still not moved on from Leonard. This was further implied in "The Justice League Recombination" when she told Leonard that he was one of the reasons New Year's Eve became unpleasant, and when the two exchange awkward looks as Penny kisses her date, Zack (with whom she had reunited after their breakup in order to have a date on New Year's Eve). In "The Love Car Displacement", Penny accompanies the guys, Bernadette, and Amy to an academic conference in Big Sur. She and Leonard share the same hotel room for a time and they almost have sex until Raj walks in on them. The next day, bored of the conference, Penny accepted a ride back to Los Angeles from Professor Glenn, Bernadette's tall and attractive ex-boyfriend. When Raj's sister, Priya, returns in the episode "The Cohabitation Formulation", she and Leonard continue their relationship. Penny appears to be initially accepting of their relationship, but is later discovered by Amy to be heartbroken over it. In the following weeks, she began to realize more and more clearly that she still had strong feelings for Leonard.

In the Season 4 finale, Penny reveals to Raj that she regretted breaking up with Leonard. However, even though she and Raj both agree to be friends, they get drunk and end up having sex, which Leonard, Sheldon, and Howard discover the next morning. In the Season 5 premiere, Raj confesses to her that they in fact did not have sex as everyone thinks, and she gave him the nickname "Quickdraw." She spends the rest of the episode with Amy avoiding the guys in an attempt to apologize for her encounter with Raj.

In "The Ornithophobia Diffusion" Leonard and Penny go on a platonic date as friends, but after Leonard expresses the opinion that he does not have to pay for everything or defer to her because they are not a couple, they end up bickering and sabotaging each other's attempts to socialize with members of the opposite sex. Penny realizes that she finds Leonard's more assertive demeanor attractive, but when he regresses to groveling in order to have sex with her, she rebuffs him.

On the spur of the moment in "The Recombination Hypothesis", Leonard asks Penny out on a date after he imagined what getting back with her might be like. Their real date ends successfully and they agree to take their relationship slow in "The Beta Test Initiation".

Development

In the original, unaired pilot of the series, the conception of the female lead was very different. She was called Katie, and was envisoned as "a street-hardened, tough-as-nails woman with a vulnerable interior". Sheldon and Leonard would "approach her with honesty, to draw the real, sensitive Katie out". The role was played by Amanda Walsh. However, the test audiences reacted to the character negatively, seeing her as too mean. Because of this, the character was changed, and the role was recast.

Tom Jicha of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel says of Cuoco, "Her character had the potential to be a bimbo but she has developed it into a fully fleshed-out woman, who isn't as book-smart as the other characters but is wiser in so many ways. She's also a great straight person, who can get off zingers of her own.

See also

• List of characters in The Big Bang Theory
• List of The Big Bang Theory episodes