Selena Gomez Almost Played A Big Bang Theory Character With A Connection To Amy

"The Big Bang Theory" featured plenty of famous guest stars — like a bunch of "Star Trek" veterans, the late James Earl Jones, and Bob Newhart, just to name a few — but some celebrities either turned down the chance to be a part of Chuck Lorre's show or just missed the boat somehow. Macaulay Culkin was asked to play an unspecified lead role and said no, while Marisa Tomei elected not to play Penny (a role that ultimately went to Kaley Cuoco). According to Jessica Radloff's book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," pop star and actor Selena Gomez actually really wanted to appear on "The Big Bang Theory," but the show couldn't make it work with her schedule.

As executive producer Steve Molaro recalled, he noticed that Gomez posted on social media about how much she liked "The Big Bang Theory," which gave him an idea. "After I had heard she liked the show, we approached Selena's team a couple of times to have her on, but it never worked out due to scheduling reasons," he told Radloff. "I'm a fan of hers and would have loved to have had her on."

Molaro actually had a very specific plan for who Gomez could play — a relative of Amy Farrah Fowler, played by Mayim Bialik. "I never even got to pitch it to them, but I had kicked around an idea that Amy had been complaining about her awful stepsister and what a b***h she was," Molaro said. "Which would be news because we didn't even know she had one. This, of course, was before we established Amy's dad and mom were still together. When we meet this stepsister, played by Selena, she's beautiful and great and everyone loves her and Amy was just being jealous. It never got further than that. It would have been fun if it could have worked out."

As Jessica Radloff's book details, this idea from Steve Molaro — which unfortunately never came to fruition — came up during a time where the show couldn't quite figure out what to do with Amy Farrah Fowler, a character introduced in season 3 of "The Big Bang Theory." A neurobiologist who forms a slow-moving romantic connection with Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) — which echoes the fact that Bialik is a neuroscientist — Amy's character doesn't come through particularly clearly at first. Honestly, she just seems like "Sheldon, but a girl" during her early days on the show. So, what changed? As Chuck Lorre told Radloff, he felt like Amy really "blossomed" (get it?) when she got to do scenes with Penny and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), the show's other two female leads. As their friendship grew, so did Amy's character.

"One of the best discoveries of the series was when Amy, who is a lonely character, found friendship and camaraderie with Penny, as well as Bernadette," Lorre mused. "She had women in her life that she loved and could talk to; she had never had that in her life prior. Her falling in love with Penny and Bernadette may have been more important than falling in love with Sheldon because of how it deepened her character." It's a shame that Selena Gomez never got to play Amy's awful stepsister, but thankfully, the show found a way to give more depth to Amy's character ... and Gomez ended up starring on another hit comedy series.

Selena Gomez, in case you were worried for any reason, is doing completely fine — she's actually the star of a hit Hulu comedy that's still going strong in its fourth season. Back in 2021, it was announced that Gomez would join comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short in a leading role on a new series called "Only Murders in the Building," and not only that, but Gomez signed onto the project as an executive producer. (Earlier that year, Gomez launched her own production company called July Moon Production.) The rest is, at this point, history.

The first season of "Only Murders in the Building" was a runaway hit with Gomez leading alongside Short and Martin as Mabel Mora, a misanthropic young woman living alone in a pricey New York apartment building called the Arconian. When someone is murdered in the Arconian in season 1, Gomez's Mabel teams up with two other residents — retired actor Charles-Haden Savage (Martin) and theater director Oliver Putnam (Short) — to solve the mystery, launching a true crime podcast in the process. Sure, the seasons that have followed have sort of rehashed this exact same plot over and over again, but it kind of doesn't matter; Gomez, Martin, and Short make an absolutely phenomenal trio, and clearly, Gomez had the comedic chops to play a guest role on "The Big Bang Theory" and perhaps would have gotten involved if her schedule allowed.

"Only Murders in the Building" is available to stream on Hulu, while "The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on Max.