Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler won a Nobel Prize. Howard Wolowitz went to space. Stuart Bloom spent much of The Big Bang Theory trying to keep a comic book shop open.
Played by Kevin Sussman, Stuart was the person whose life always seemed to be going slightly worse than everyone else’s. He was broke, frequently unwell, unlucky in love and never quite certain whether he belonged in the group at all.
Seven years after the sitcom ended, the fate of the universe has been handed to him. It goes about as well as the title Stuart Fails to Save the Universe suggests.
Before embarking on his very own odyssey, Stuart causes the trouble himself, damaging a quantum-interference device built by Sheldon and Leonard, and destabilising reality. He sets out to repair it alongside his girlfriend Denise (Lauren Lapkus), geologist Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn) and physicist Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie). Four characters who once orbited the main cast are now falling through a succession of alternate universes, hoping the next one will be slightly less disastrous than the last.
So far, the resulting series looks and behaves almost nothing like The Big Bang Theory. The apartments, laboratories and live studio audience have given way to post-apocalyptic Pasadena, fantasy worlds, computer-generated creatures and the possibility that the series could explore a different genre from one week to the next.
The fourth episode, released this week on OSN+ and titled Spoiler: Stuart Makes a Wallet, finds Stuart confined to a psychiatric hospital and beginning to believe none of his journey happened. His memories are treated as delusions, his companions have become patients and hospital staff, and his psychiatrist has the face of Amy, with Mayim Bialik returning to play a very different version of her original character.
“We realised somewhere in the first few episodes that we can get away with anything, so let’s just see how far we can push this,” co-creator Chuck Lorre tells The National.
They did, however, set one limit.
“Comedy is about character, and this doesn’t work if the characters don’t remain who they are,” co-creator Bill Prady says. “They have to be the people we know them to be, and then you put them in absurd situations and see how they react.”
That bargain is clearest whenever the scale of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe collides with the old characters’ capacity to become distracted by something trivial. Faced with another Stuart, who has arrived to warn that reality is collapsing, Stuart and Bert wander into a discussion of his master of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. Another version of himself is standing in front of him and the multiverse needs saving, but Stuart is having trouble with his pen.
“It was also part of the trick of preserving the kind of banter that the show is known for, and the verbal dexterity of it all, while putting them in situations that aren’t just them sitting around eating dinner,” co-creator Zak Penn says.
Lorre had been considering a series built around Stuart since The Big Bang Theory was still running, although he found little immediate enthusiasm for it. He later contacted Penn, whose credits include X2: X-Men United, The Avengers and Ready Player One, to help create something larger than the traditional sitcoms on which he had built his career.
The two spent several years trying to find the programme. Lorre remembers sandwiches being eaten and little progress being made before Penn suggested bringing in Prady, who co-created The Big Bang Theory with him. Within days, they knew what the series was.
Its influences ranged from Monty Python and Mel Brooks to Men in Black and Doctor Who. The structure gave them permission to follow those interests wherever they led, without having to return every week to the same sofa.
“We were going to fly without a net,” Penn says. “We were going to go one episode at a time. Each week, we were asking: 'What is the direction no one is going to expect us to go in?' We tried to go in that direction over and over again.”
The actors returned to characters they knew, although most had previously appeared for only a few scenes at a time. Bowie’s Kripke would antagonise Sheldon at Caltech. Posehn’s Bert might briefly unsettle the group with the contrast between his imposing stature and gentle manner. Neither was expected to carry the story.
“It felt like 10 new jobs instead of one old one,” Bowie says. “It was nice that both of us had very similar roles in the old show, which was to show up and mildly annoy the main characters.
“Make Sheldon annoyed and leave. That was it for me. To actually be the engine of the plot, and to have wants and needs and a fully fleshed-out character, was really exciting and fun.”
Stuart had even further to travel. His permanent state of panic once seemed excessive for a man trying to sell comic books. Now his circumstances have finally caught up with it.
Sussman learnt about the project during the pandemic, when Lorre invited him to his office and presented the idea as though the actor might need some persuading. Months passed without further news, leaving Sussman to check his phone to reassure himself that the meeting had really taken place.
“Discovering that I was number one on the call sheet was surreal,” Sussman says. “I think it really hit me when I first came to the studio lot, and all the little golf carts for the production were driving around and it said Stuart on them.
“That wore off pretty soon. I got a good day or two of being excited about that. Stuart is in the title, but it really is an ensemble comedy. I was just happy to be in a show where the four of us are such good friends outside of the show and on the show.”
His history with the franchise could have gone very differently. Sussman was originally cast as Howard before the part went to Simon Helberg.
“Simon Helberg is so amazing that I feel like the universe sorted itself out,” he says. “The Howard that I auditioned with was completely different, and different from Stuart also. But it is weird, especially since the show ended seven years ago, to come back to this character.”
The studio to which he returned had changed, too. The Big Bang Theory was filmed as a multi-camera sitcom before a live audience, using sets open on one side. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is a single-camera production, with location work, visual effects and rooms built around the cast.
“It feels more real,” Sussman says. “That was the weirdest thing. It wasn’t the fourth wall. It was actually having a ceiling in the comic book store.”
Stuart and Denise had only recently become a couple when The Big Bang Theory ended. Years of their relationship have now passed off screen, giving Sussman and Lapkus a chance to discover what was left once the initial awkward courtship had settled into something more durable.
“Because this show is not a multi-cam in front of a live audience, it is able to have those more intimate moments,” Sussman says. “Their relationship benefits from having this depth that it wouldn’t have had in the old show.”
Lapkus came to the production with an extensive background in improvisational comedy.
“We had these days where we were getting a bald cap and we were in a Matrix pod, and then the next day we had a centaur's rear end,” she says. “Every day was something different.”
And every day pushed them in new ways as actors who had become so used to a single-set, three-camera format for so many years on The Big Bang Theory.
“There's one sequence in which we're suspended from wires. I think it looks fantastic, but it doesn’t look like we’re falling from 30 feet, which we were,” Lapkus says. “We had to act like we were fine with it and then later privately cry together.”
Sussman adds: “We were supposed to be screaming in the scene. What we learnt is that when you really feel like you’re falling to your death, there’s no screaming.”
Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is streaming on OSN+ in the UAE, with new episodes released weekly
