The Big Bang Theory Character That Rick Moranis Could Have Played

From time to time, "The Big Bang Theory" would bring on some pretty big names to play the family members of its main characters. Just to name a few, Christine Baranski plays Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, mother to Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Laurie Metcalf plays Sheldon Cooper's (Jim Parsons) mom Mary Cooper, and Kathy Bates shows up as Mrs. Fowler, the mom of Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik). Dads get some play too; memorably, Penny's (Kaley Cuoco) dad Wyatt is played by "Revenge of the Nerds" star Keith Carradine. But what about Howard Wolowitz, played by Simon Helberg? We hear but never see his mother, voiced by character actor Carol Ann Susi (Susi passed away in 2014 and, as a result, Mrs. Wolowitz did too), but we never meet his dad. Apparently, though, Helberg and some of the show's producers really, really wanted "Ghostbusters," "Little Shop of Horrors," and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" star Rick Moranis to play Mr. Wolowitz.

Executive producer and showrunner Steve Molaro spoke to The Hollywood Reporter in 2016, and when the outlet put Moranis' name forward as a potential for Howard's dad, Molaro said he and his colleagues had definitely talked about it. "That name has come up," Molaro confirmed at the time. "Everybody loves him and thinks he's great. We haven't talked about anything. When the time comes, it'll be interesting to think about who could play him."

In a separate interview a few weeks later — also with The Hollywood Reporter — Helberg said he had high hopes for Howard's dad. "I feel like something will happen [with Howard's uncast dad]," Helberg said. "I've heard different people mentioned — all of whom are short comedians. I've heard Rick Moranis and Martin Short. Any short, gawky comedian basically means that I idolized them growing up, like those two, and they can potentially be Howard's dad. I stunted my own growth to be more like Martin Short — I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes from the age of six because I thought you had to be short to be that funny. You can't go wrong with anyone like that. I hope we get to meet him and I'm sure it will be somebody brilliant."

While the "Spaceballs" actor was clearly a contender to play Howard's dad (though Moranis has been largely retired for decades now), Jessica Radloff revealed in her 2022 book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series" that the show's creator, Chuck Lorre, wanted a freaking Beatle to play Howard's dad. Specifically, he was hoping Ringo Starr would guest star on the show as himself, but apparently, Starr wasn't interested.

"Well, 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, referencing Starr's real name. "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."

"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 insisting that he's happy to create an alternate universe story where the drummer from The Beatles is Howard's dad. "Basically I'll be working on my own 'Big Bang' fan fiction in twenty years and selling it at Comic-Con. But yeah, we never did get to meet him."

So, who eventually played Howard's dad on "The Big Bang Theory?" Nobody, actually. Eventually, Steve Molaro said that so much time had passed by that Chuck Lorre decided that Howard's dad would never appear on the series. This leads to a touching season 6 episode titled "The Closet Reconfiguration," where Howard finds a letter from his father but decides not to read it; as a result, all of his friends come up with comforting things the letter could say, and Howard chooses to believe their interpretations rather than see what his dad really said about leaving Howard and Mrs. Wolowitz to fend for themselves.

"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," Molaro explained in Jessica Radloff's book, regarding casting and including Howard's dad. What did Helberg think about it? He admitted to Radloff that he was really bummed.

"If I'm going to be brutally honest, I was disappointed that we didn't meet Howard's dad," Helberg said bluntly. "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. And whenever I got a piece of physical comedy or anything that was totally wild and over the top, I voraciously devoured that, too. But sometimes I wanted more of that meatiness that we would get in some of the storylines we've talked about."

"The Big Bang Theory," which never shows Howard's dad, is available to stream on Max.