The Big Bang Theory stars were praised for a pay cut that Chuck Lorre remembers differently
When The Big Bang Theory's five leads were asked to give up 10%, Chuck Lorre expected 'all for one, one for all'. What he got instead made it into his memoir.
Chuck Lorre's Sitcom: A Memoir came out on 13 October 2026, and the passage everyone is quoting is not about his decade in Scientology. It is about The Big Bang Theory. In an interview with Variety ahead of publication, Lorre said he was disappointed when the show's five original stars wouldn't take a salary haircut so that Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch could be paid more.
As he tells it, Warner Bros. and CBS had decided Amy and Bernadette deserved bigger cheques, and the money would come from a 10% cut for Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar. Lorre expected a formality.
"I assumed they'd quickly agree, you know, all for one, one for all. Wrong again. They were outraged that they would even be asked to take a small cut in order to reward the two newer cast members."
— Chuck Lorre, in Sitcom: A Memoir, as quoted by Variety
Anyone who followed the show in 2017 will find that version unfamiliar. Back then, the same cut was the nicest story in television.
The version everyone heard in 2017
The news broke at the end of February 2017, while contracts for series 11 and 12 were being renegotiated, and it was reported as something close to a group hug. The five leads, each on roughly $1 million an episode, would give up $100,000 an episode apiece, about 10%, to help Bialik and Rauch, who had been negotiating together for parity. The Hollywood Reporter explained why the stars took surprising pay cuts; other headlines had them "offer" and "agree" to it so their female co-stars could earn more. Nobody wrote the word "outraged".
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Put the two accounts next to each other and they don't fit:
- 2017, the trade press: the five agreed to a $100,000-an-episode cut, presented as solidarity with two underpaid co-stars.
- 2026, Lorre: the five were asked for 10% and were furious at being asked at all.
- 2026, Variety's summary: the cast "wouldn't take" the haircut.
Either the 2017 coverage flattered the cast, or the memoir folds a bad-tempered first meeting into a deal that was eventually signed. The excerpts published so far don't settle which, and Lorre isn't offering a payslip.
For nine years the pay cut was the cast's good deed. In Lorre's book it is the moment they let him down.
From a Toyota Tercel to a Mercedes limo
To be fair to Lorre, he doesn't play it as a morality tale. In the Variety interview he describes a cast hit by a scale of success nobody involved was prepared for: actors who had suddenly gone "from a Toyota Tercel to a Mercedes limo", with lawyers and representatives arriving at the same speed as the money. A pay request that would have been a chat in series one became a negotiation by series ten.
He also ends the story on something close to a truce:
"Despite becoming insanely wealthy and famous on a global scale, most everyone in the cast... is filled with gratitude. Only a few don't take my calls."
— Chuck Lorre, in Sitcom: A Memoir
The Big Bang Theory ended in May 2019 after 12 series and 279 episodes, and it still runs on repeat somewhere on the telly most evenings. None of the five has publicly answered the memoir yet. Lorre didn't say who the few are. With five names on the original call sheet, fans won't need long to start guessing.
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