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Watching the early seasons of The Big Bang Theory, you wonder how someone like Sheldon Cooper could ever have a romantic relationship. Sheldon was uncompromising when it came to other people and seemed to see romantic pursuits as a distraction.

Then along came Amy Farrah Fowler.

Not only was Amy Sheldon’s intellectual equal, but she was also able to challenge him in ways his friends never could. Sheldon seldom cared what others thought of him, but when Amy took him to task, he would listen.

However, their relationship still moved at its own pace. That’s why Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik were delighted (and surprised) to learn that their characters would finally consummate the relationship in the season nine episode ‘The Opening Night Excitation.’

“It felt very, very right,” Jim Parsons said during an appearance at PaleyFest 2016. “Yeah, it felt right for a relationship that we had really guarded as so personal and special and different. It felt like we were joining the club of all humanity,” Mayim Bialik added.

“I never thought Sheldon would have sex on this show. I didn’t. And I will say, I look forward to doing it again just like Sheldon does,” Parsons joked.

For Parsons, the relationship upgrade also opened up a new way of shooting scenes that he didn’t realize he had been missing out on.

“I discovered a new way of conversing with an actor on this series, which was pillow talk. And I had never done that in nine years, and everybody else had bedroom scenes before, and suddenly I was in bed with you,” Parsons said.

According to showrunner Steven Molaro, the writers' room had been thinking about the episode for some time.

“For a long time, I had kind of been kicking around the back of my head two things. When the time came, Bob Newhart would be there in ghost form to counsel Sheldon, and the other thing that I think we kind of felt for a while was it would be on an event like her birthday, so he could say, ‘I look forward to next year when we do it again.’ That was a way to let this thing happen but Sheldon to still stay Sheldon. With Star Wars coming up, that was a great reason and excuse to bring Bob back into it,” Molaro said.

When Parsons and Bialik got their scripts for the episode, they were shocked. “Neither Jim nor I, we really didn’t think that was happening now. I never read the scripts. We get them the night before we start a table read, and I typically don’t read them before the morning of the table reading. But this tape night I happened to be leafing through the script, and we passed each other in the hallway,” Bialik said.

Parsons reaction was hilarious…and very unlike Sheldon.

“She said, ‘Did you read the next episode.’ And I jokingly just turned back to her in the dark of the set and went, ‘What, do we fuck?’ I was kidding,” Parsons recalled.

If you’ve seen the rest of The Big Bang Theory, then you know that this opened up new doors for Amy and Sheldon, leading to some of the show’s most heartwarming (and comedic) moments. It’s just a shame that Bob Newhart’s ghost couldn’t be there for all those moments. 

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