Are Kaley Cuoco And Mayim Bialik Friends In Real Life?

Kaley Cuoco and Mayim Bialik are two very important pieces in one of our favorite TV shows ever — "The Big Bang Theory." As Penny and Amy, respectively, these two characters are polar opposites, but click in their Los Angeles friend group. The two shared the screen for around 200 episodes between 2010 and 2019, when the show wrapped for good, so we can't help but wonder if the actors are friends in real life, too. To find out, we did some digging.

The biggest tip that Cuoco and Bialik are truly friends outside of "The Big Bang Theory" is how they handled their salaries. In 2017, the main cast, which included Cuoco and Bialik, was dealing with salary negotiations, per Variety. Bialik and Melissa Rauch were fighting to get their salaries brought up to par with the main five cast members who had been there from the beginning — Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar. Rauch and Bialik were reportedly making less money than the other five ($200,000 per episode, compared to $1 million), so contracts for the final two seasons were held up.

In an act of friendship and respect, all five original cast members offered up pay cuts to help close the pay gap for Bialik and Rauch. Even if Cuoco and Bialik aren't best friends for life, we'd say they're, at the very least, good friends, especially for Cuoco to offer up a reported $100,000 per episode of her pay.

It's hard to say if it was always rainbows and butterflies between "The Big Bang Theory" co-stars Kaley Cuoco and Mayim Bialik, though. In 2018, rumors floated around from Radar Online about catfights on set between Cuoco and Bialik, but Gossip Cop squashed them pretty quickly. Bialik's rep even told Gossip Cop at the time, "There's no truth to this story whatsoever." So it sounds like those rumors were just that — rumors.

The supposed drama was never even reported by other outlets, and the speculation on the "cat fights" disappeared quickly. What was covered, though, was the cast's bond on set and off. Bialik even told People in 2017, "I'm happy to report that we have a very cohesive cast and we all know that our strength is together."

And while these two haven't posted a ton of pictures together on social media, they definitely still hung out after their show ended. Bialik shared a photo with Cuoco and her sister on Instagram in January 2020. With the photo, she wrote, "2020 starting out strong for celebrity sightings – omg it's @kaleycuoco." So if nothing else, Bialik and Cuoco are at least friendly enough to grab coffee from time to time.

In August 2020, Mayim Bialik participated in a Q&A with Wired. Many of the topics centered around her time on "The Big Bang Theory," and she even fielded one question about her friendship with Kaley Cuoco. "Well, we worked together for nine years," she replied when asked about the nature of their bond. "Then I went to her wedding and celebrated things with her. I would say we're friends." Well, there you have it straight from the actor's mouth.

Cuoco has been married and divorced twice — first to Ryan Sweeting and then to Karl Cook — and Bialik didn't reveal which of Cuoco's weddings she attended. According to E! News, however, the "Blossom" star was one of the confirmed celebrity attendees at Cuoco's 2018 nuptials to Cook. Unfortunately, her presence wasn't documented on film. As for Cuoco's wedding to Sweeting, which took place on December 31, 2013, there has never been any confirmed report that Bialik was in attendance. However, she did wish the couple well on social media at the time.

 "Congratulations to @KaleyCuoco on her new year's eve wedding," Bialik wrote on X. "Yay kaley and ryan!"

Unfortunately, the cast of "The Big Bang Theory" wasn't as chummy behind the scenes as fans might have thought or wanted. At least according to Kaley Cuoco. "I was constantly trying to keep this group together desperately, and we all really did love each other, but it was 12 years," she told The Independent in February 2026. "There were ups and downs. I did a lot of hand-holding, and I think I did the best that I could." She continued, "But, you know, these kinds of shows ... it was an explosion of money and fame and became something so much bigger than any of us could have imagined. So of course there was a little bit of drama."

That said, Cuoco didn't reveal which cast members dealt with drama on set. However, she did confirm some discomfort around the media publicizing the $1 million-per-episode salary that she, Jim Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kunal Nayyar, and Simon Helberg commanded. "It was weird," Cuoco said. "Would anyone want people sharing what they make?" As mentioned above, she and the other original cast members still agreed to take a pay cut so that Mayim Bialik and Melissa Rauch — who joined the show later — could earn fairer pay.

And no matter what else may have happened on set, Cuoco would still come back to play Penny again. "It was some of the best years of my life, and some of the most fun I've ever had," she shared with People in October 2024.