The Big Bang Theory Wanted To Cast A Legenday Musician As Howard Wolowitz's Father

During the 12 season run of "The Big Bang Theory," the audience meet the main characters' parents and extended families from time to time — and those parents and family members are usually played by some pretty big performers. Laurie Metcalf plays Mary Cooper, mother to Jim Parsons' Sheldon Cooper, and Tony and Emmy Award winner Christine Baranski also shows up a few times as Leonard's mother Dr. Beverly Hofstadter. Penny's (Kaley Cuoco) parents are played by Katey Sagal (in a nod to Cuoco and Sagal's sitcom "8 Simple Rules") and Keith Carradine ("Revenge of the Nerds, Lizzie McGuire"). 

So, what about Howard Wolowitz, played by Simon Helberg? We hear his mother Mrs. Wolowitz off-screen — she's voiced by Carol Ann Susi, who passed away in 2014, as did the character — but we never meet his dad. According to Jessica Radloff's book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," showrunner Chuck Lorre had an awesome idea about who he'd like to cast as Howard's absent father.

Apparently, Lorre and his team wanted to recruit former Beatle Ringo Starr. "It was a fun conversation based on Simon's haircut and physical appearance that you could buy the genetic link to Richard Starkey," Lorre said. "I think the idea started with Simon, and it was a good idea. I think we pursued it to the point where we got a solid no [from Starr's team]. But if not Ringo, then I wanted his impact to be such that we didn't actually see him, but we saw the fact that he's missing from this character's life. His absence was more important than casting the character."

In Jessica Radloff's book, Simon Helberg weighed in on exactly how they could have worked Ringo Starr into the narrative of "The Big Bang Theory," had he said yes (and, honestly, weirder things have happened; Starr appeared as himself in the 2016 cult classic "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"). As Helberg told Radloff, he thought that he had the entire thing figured out, and he thinks it would have been really funny.

"That would have been the most absurd twist to find out Howard is actually the son of a Beatle from a wild night in the '70s where Mrs. Wolowitz and Ringo had blacked out at the Rainbow Room or something, but it was never to be," Helberg said before joking about how he'll always hold out hope. "Basically I'll be working on my own 'Big Bang' fan fiction in 20 years and selling it at Comic-Con. But yeah, we never did get to meet him." The truth is, never casting anyone as Howard's dad led to an extremely emotional episode where he finds a strange keepsake from his absent father — although Helberg is right that it would have been pretty incredible to find out that Howard was related to the drummer of the single most influential band in modern history.

In the season 6 episode "The Closet Reconfiguration," Howard and his wife Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) find a letter from his long-lost dad while they're cleaning out a huge junk pile in their closet — but understandably, Howard is a little worried about what he'll discover if he reads it. As a solution, his friends come up with something incredibly sweet: they all present a different version of what the letter could say without revealing which one is true, if any of them are. 

While discussing this particular episode and scene in Jessica Radloff's book, executive producer Steve Molaro said that it was the result of the fact that Chuck Lorre bristled at the idea of introducing a long-lost Mr. Wolowitz: "There were a number of times we talked about it in the room or came up with stories that would involve that, but it got to the point where Chuck just didn't want to do it." As for Simon Helberg, he said he was actually sort of bummed that it never happened.

"If I'm going to be brutally honest, I was disappointed that we didn't meet Howard's dad," Helberg admitted. "I felt like in some ways it was a missed opportunity to not have him only because they had painted this really intricate picture of that relationship, and sort of forged this road that was either going to lead to it or just be a dead end, I guess. I wanted to know, and since the writers came up with some of the most brilliant and clever ways to tell these stories, I felt creatively it would have been earned because when the writers really did go for those nuanced, layered storylines, they knocked it out of the park."

"The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on Max now, but to be clear, nobody plays Howard's dad — especially Ringo Starr.