“I am such a true-crime fanatic, and I love that genre so much,” she says. “The tone of this show resembled kind of what I did in Flight Attendant, in the sense that it had all the things [like comedy, drama, high-stakes adventure]. I thrive in that area. I like that chaos, so it felt perfect. Then Chris Messina signed on, and we had the best time together. It checked every box.”
The role also offered Cuoco a chance to show a different side of herself—as a woman who just happens to be pregnant and isn't limited by what she can or can't do. “She's not changing the way she dresses or decisions to be made,” Cuoco says. “I wanted all that to be in there. It was all very thought out in an authentic way.”
Here, Cuoco goes into detail about this latest chapter in her life, what she wants next, the major sacrifice she made for love, and more.
Glamour: Your character, Ava, was not originally supposed to be pregnant. How did that change things for the storyline?
Kaley Cuoco: Right, it was not written that way, at all. In fact, the original script had Ava and Nathan with older kids. They were like, “You know what? We're going to take out the kids completely.” This is when I signed on. I was like, “Great. I like that.” Then, when I got pregnant, I told them and they said, “You know what? This actually works better.” I was glad because I didn't have to hide my pregnancy. It worked so much better. The stakes are higher. I also love that it got written in and nothing really changed, as far as the scripts. Ava just happened to be pregnant. We didn't talk about it all the time. She still had the fantasies. We're doing all the high jinks and running around and…
And having sex, which is so important.
Having sex. Yes, which I love. It was all just normal. Not changing the way she dressed and not changing the decisions she made, not taking out the sex scenes and the fantasies. I wanted all that to be in there. Just because she's pregnant doesn't change anything. I was very proud of that. I would wear tank tops. Half the time my stomach is hanging out. In later episodes, you see me in a swimsuit, which I'll probably regret later. I did all of it. I was like, “This is very real.” I wanted women to see it's real and it's great. That stuff is so important to me. I'm constantly throwing my hair up and doing it myself. There was a gym scene and I'm wearing my sports bra with no makeup and my stomach's hanging out. It's real, it's fun, and it's cute. In that same scene, I was very adamant about wearing Nathan's tennis shorts because I thought, Okay. She's not really into this pregnancy. You don't see her out there doing all her shopping. She's probably bought nothing, no maternity clothes. She's going to pull his shorts out and wear them. It was all very thought out in an authentic way. I wanted it to look and feel as real as it felt to me.
