Kunal Nayyar Hated One Of Raj's Character Quirks On The Big Bang Theory

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Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with "The Big Bang Theory" knows that, until the end of the show's sixth season (which, for context, is halfway through the show's 12 season run) Raj Koothrappali, played by Kunal Nayyar, can't talk around women. This is chalked up to Raj's selective mutism, which manifests around women due to his utter anxiety ... though the show's writers did add a pretty questionable aspect to this trait in which he can talk to women if he's had a lot to drink. In any case, Raj's selectively mute streak came to an end in the season 6 finale "The Bon Voyage Reaction" after his breakup with Lucy (Kate Micucci), where he cries in Penny's (Kaley Cuoco) arms and talks to her freely and without alcohol for the first time. So how did this all come to pass? In her 2022 book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," Jessica Radloff spoke to Nayyar, writers and executive producers Steve Molaro and Steve Holland, and writer Tara Fernandez about this big moment for Raj.

Understandably, Nayyar got sick of this character trait because it limited his performances. "It was definitely frustrating because there were episodes where I knew I could contribute in ways that I was handicapped by the character's issue," Nayyar shared. "There were lots of scenes where I would sit and sit and sit and then I would have to whisper something and Simon got to tell the joke. And then, after a while, I would open scripts and see if I was in scenes with a female character and then I knew I wouldn't have much to do. So after a while, the freedom to be able to speak without that was really nice, just from an acting point of view. Because there were moments when it was frustrating."

"Koothrappali being able to speak to women was a long time coming," Molaro agreed, saying that it made things really difficult for the writers as well as Nayyar. "We had been wanting to end it for a while and were just looking for the right way to do it. There were times where we had written entire scenes and then remembered, 'Wait! There's a girl in the room. Kooth can't talk.' And we have to go back and figure out a way through that. It happened more than once. The selective mutism was a fun idea in the beginning, but I'm glad we were able to move on from it and allow Koothrappali to grow and participate more. And Penny was the perfect person for him to cross this milestone with." 

Okay, so how exactly does Penny factor into the whole thing?

In "The Bon Voyage Reaction," both Penny and Raj are at romantic crossroads. Penny is finally happily dating Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) only to discover that he's heading to the North Pole for a research expedition helmed and sponsored by Stephen Hawking, and Raj and Lucy have hit a major roadblock in their own relationship (specifically, the fact that she's too socially anxious to meet his friends). After Lucy ends things with Raj — and I'll circle back to that momentarily — Penny checks in on Raj, only to find that he's finally able to speak to her as he opens up about losing Lucy. Not only that, but Raj ends up in Penny's apartment having a girl's night with her, Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz (Melissa Rauch), and Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik), and from that point on, he barely shuts up. (In fact, the closing credits gag is that he just keeps yapping as they roll.)

Pretty much everyone involved with this major "Big Bang Theory" moment absolutely loved how it shook out. As Nayyar said, "There was a real innocence to him. He just wanted love so badly." The actor continued:

"He wanted to find love with every fiber of his being, and he wasn't tryng to find love in a possessive sense. He genuinely felt incomplete without love. And you felt that for him, especially when that didn't come to fruititon. That moment when he begins to talk in front of Penny and he says, 'What is wrong with me? Why can't I find love? Why can't I have love?' and his weeping was just so powerful — just to see someone be vulnerable and say that when there's nothing wrong with him. I think all of us have felt that way in our lives where we truly come to a moment where we feel so lost, and the confidence and who we thought we were is just gone. Yes, of course he's got his idiosyncrasies, but who doesn't? He just wanted to find love so badly."

"From a performance standpoint, you were watching magic," Tara Hernandez, who's credited with the story for "The Bon Voyage Reaction" alongside Steves Molaro and Holland, recalled. "And I'm so down with men crying, which Kooth did often and unapologetically."

Talking to Penny about deep emotional issues without a drop of alcohol in his system was obviously an enormous step for Raj, but it took losing Lucy to get there. I already mentioned how, while Raj wants Lucy to meet his friends, she's incredibly anxious about it, and he doesn't help with that feeling. In fact, when he convinces Lucy to have dinner with Amy, thinking she might be a relatively easy entry point into the group, Raj and Amy end up arguing about the root cause of Lucy's social anxiety from a scientific standpoint as if she's not even there, which results in Lucy fleeing into the bathroom. The two talk on Skype afterwards, and Lucy tells Raj that the entire thing made her incredibly uncomfortable because Raj was pushing her too hard; she later breaks up with him over text message, breaking his heart. Lucy reappears in season 7 and does apologize for the way she ended things, and later comes back in season 10 with some of Raj's other exes, but "The Bon Voyage Reaction" is the true end of this character's arc.

"I really adore her," Kunal Nayyar said of working with Kate Micucci before saying that, ultimately, he understood why Lucy was written off — and how she helped Raj grow. "She's a really lovely human and just a really fun personality to be around. But also, it was the first time Raj was taking care of someone who was dealing with neuroses worse than his. As a character, it was a sweet juxtaposition to what you were used to seeing."

"I love Kate Micucci," Steve Holland agreed before saying that it was way more difficult than he anticipated to write scenes that only featured Lucy and Raj. "Kate was so terrific, but those scenes with Raj and Lucy were actually hard to write because they were two very socially awkward people in a room together. It was difficult because as characters, neither one of them would spark conversation or push conversation. There was fun awkwardness to write, but it became really tricky to write some of those scenes." In any case, Raj was able to speak to women for most of the rest of the series — apart from an unexpected selective mutism flare-up in later seasons — so clearly, Lucy served a great purpose on the show.

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