Johnny Galecki Had A Gross On-Set Habit During The Big Bang Theory

We all have gross, weird habits. I'm not going to write mine down here, because I'm a lady and nobody needs to know that, but we all know that we do. Unfortunately for Johnny Galecki, his "Big Bang Theory" co-star Kunal Nayyar — who did ultimately play Raj Koothrappali on the series after briefly being fired before it began filming — has put all of Galecki's dirty little secrets on blast. Well, he's put at least one on blast — specifically, the really gross way that Galecki disposed of his chewing gum on the set of "The Big Bang Theory."

During an appearance on the British show "Sunday Brunch" (via The Independent UK) in February of 2022 to promote his show "Suspicion," Nayyar talked a bit about how they filmed all those stairwell scenes before revealing something unbelievably disgusting about Galecki. Asked about what was past the stairwell set, Nayyar was quite blunt: "Down there is nothing. There's a wall there where Johnny Galecki, for 12 years, would stick his chewing gum on. I'm not joking."

Not only that, but Nayyar had a sales pitch: if you really, really love Galecki as Leonard Hofstadter, you can probably find some of that gum on Google. (Maybe. I have not confirmed this, and I'm not sure I want to.) "So if any of you are Johnny Galecki fans and you want his dried chewing gum, I am sure it's for sale somewhere on the internet. Welcome to Hollywood," Nayyar joked. This does clear up one thing for me, I guess; turns out Galecki does know how to chew like a human being, which I honestly doubted due to how horrible he is at "eating" on camera.

Let's back up for a second. Gross on-set habits aside, who did Johnny Galecki and Kunal Nayyar play on "The Big Bang Theory?" Alongside Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, and Simon Helberg — who play Sheldon Cooper, Leonard's eventual wife Penny Hofstadter, and Howard Wolowitz — Galecki and Nayyar play Leonard Hofstadter and Raj Koothrappali, two of the show's original characters and two of Sheldon's close friends. In the show's pilot, Penny moves in across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon, who share an apartment, and she immediately becomes an object of fascination among the group. Leonard muses that their babies will be "smart and beautiful," Howard is just generally a big creep to and about Penny, and Raj is rendered completely silent thanks to a very odd trait he's given by the writers (selective mutism around women unless he's drunk).

The two do grow a lot throughout the show, though. Leonard stops treating Penny like an object and more like a person; as she becomes a legitimate part of the group, the two pursue a romance and ultimately marry. Raj has a series of relationships where he proves that he can talk in front of women, but in an unsatisfying turn of events, he ends the series completely alone. Thanks to their performances as Leonard and Raj, Galecki and Nayyar definitely earned their respective places in the sitcom hall of fame — although now we know that, when the cameras weren't rolling, Galecki was just grossing everybody out with his discarded gum.

"The Big Bang Theory" is streaming on Max now.