Where Is The Big Bang Theory's Original Female Lead Actress, Amanda Walsh, Now?

When you think of "The Big Bang Theory," the massively popular CBS sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, you probably think of the five lead actors who kicked off the show — namely, Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kunal Nayyar, Simon Helberg, and Kaley Cuoco. As it happens, Nayyar was briefly fired before Lorre got him back on board to play Raj Koothrappali (fighting against CBS in the process), and Cuoco wasn't the first person to play Penny; in fact, the character was originally named Katie and designed to be a foil for Parsons' Sheldon Cooper and Galecki's Leonard Hofstadter. So who played her, and what has that actress been doing since then?

Amanda Walsh played the original form of the show's only main female character, Katie, who was simply the wrong fit for "The Big Bang Theory." In Jessica Radloff's book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," Lorre, Prady, Galecki, Parsons, and even Walsh herself weighed in on exactly what went wrong in the original pilot featuring Katie, why some well-meaning direction led her astray during filming, and what Walsh has been up to since the version of "The Big Bang Theory" featuring her as the female lead was effectively scrapped. 

According to Jessica Radloff's book, Amanda Walsh had already auditioned for "The Big Bang Theory" and been turned away — but when they brought her back in after retooling the character of Katie to make her brasher and more abrasive, that's when new problems arose for the original pilot. As Jim Parsons recalled, "They brought in Amanda, with the assumption being that her mere presence would soften the character ... which is just a tough position to be in because the role wasn't really written for her."

"I just remember Amanda being such a sweet person, and they kept pushing her to be harsher, because Katie was very street savvy," Galecki said, agreeing with Parsons and saying that some of the direction that Walsh received just didn't end up working. "[Director Jimmy] Burrows asked her to work in the blue so that the lines would reverberate into that sharper, more kind of feral manner, so even when you took the filthy words out, you were in that mind frame," he continued. "And that helped her an incredible amount. But ironically, the way they were pushing her — into that place of street-smart and maybe deceptive and duplicitous as a character — was what ended up being wrong with the character because the audience immediately felt so protective of Leonard and Sheldon." 

Walsh herself said the whole process was intense and difficult, but she thought they had everything figured out ... and also made sure to say that Lorre was great to work with. "It was one of the hardest weeks professionally that I've gone through, but by the end I felt like we landed on something," Walsh remembered. "And Chuck was incredibly supportive through it all."

Ultimately, Jimmy Burrows' direction and the way that Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre shaped the character did an enormous disservice to Amanda Walsh's performance ... meaning that, according to Radloff's book, CBS specifically singled out Walsh's poor performance with test audiences. Lorre and Prady, to their credit, took full responsibility for the fact that the network — including the former president of entertainment at CBS, Nina Tassler, who also spoke to Radloff — didn't like her performance. (As Tassler put it, Sheldon and Leonard's chemistry was great, but Katie didn't mesh with them; as she told Radloff, "The Katie character didn't really service Sheldon and Leonard's relationship. She was tougher and edgier, really down on her luck.")

"Amanda did exactly what was asked of her, and she did it beautifully," Lorre mused. "I certainly didn't understand that despite Sheldon and Leonard's intelligence, they were like children, and you couldn't put a toxic character next to them like that. It broke your heart." Prady backed him up, saying, "When we were doing the pilot a second time, Amanda's team asked if she could come in to audition again, but the network was not receptive to that. CBS knew that Katie had scored badly among test audiences. Chuck and I were very upfront in saying that the reason the character scored poorly was because the [role of] Katie was written badly. But we were not able to persuade them to see her again."

Amanda Walsh will be the first to tell you that she's been doing absolutely fine since Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady changed "The Big Bang Theory" to feature Kaley Cuoco's sweet, social Penny instead of Walsh's thorny character Katie. In fact, as she revealed to Jessica Radloff, a series of events led to her writing and story editing for "Schitt's Creek," another hit sitcom that became an Emmy darling. "It was really cool to be a part of it from the beginning, especially getting to write for Catherine O'Hara and having Eugene Levy in the writers room," Walsh said, explaining that her work on "Schitt's Creek" was vital to her overall journey, and that she thinks things worked out in the best possible way.

"I think being an actor makes me a better writer, and being a writer makes me a better actor," Walsh continued. "And I really trust that this was my path. It really was one week of my life. It was one pilot out of many. I never wanted that story to be taken out of context or seen in the wrong light. I was protective of it in that way, and all the people I worked with were so kind. The show went on to be great, and there's no real losers." She's right, and clearly, everything worked out pretty well for Walsh, who has also appeared in projects like the independent 2022 film "Doula" and the HBO comedy "Curb Your Enthusiasm," just to name a few.

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