If timing is everything, then Kaley Cuoco’s new Peacock show, Based on a True Story, came along at the perfect moment. After an insanely busy and difficult 2021 that included filming an intense second season of The Flight Attendant and going through a divorce, the actor was looking for a break. “I want to take a breath between jobs, which I haven’t done since the beginning of Big Bang Theory.

she told Glamour in her April 2022 cover story. And I want to have a relationship that I give my time to and that the person feels [like they’re] really part of my life. I get so distracted with work, and I want to have that in the future.Soon after, Cuoco went public with her relationship with actor Tom Pelphrey; by October they announced they were expecting their first child together.

who seize a unique opportunity to capitalize on America’s obsession with true crime. When Cuoco signed on, her character, Ava Bartlett, was not supposed to be pregnant, but her real-life pregnancy was written in when Cuoco let the producers know she was expecting.They were a little unsure at first,” she tells Glamour. But then they were like, ‘You know what? This is actually so much better because it raises so many stakes for this couple.’ It was a very happy accident.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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While The Flight Attendant took Cuoco all over the world, from Thailand to Iceland, True Story filmed in Los Angeles, allowing the Southern California native to sleep in her own bed every night. That was a selling point, along with the fact that it checked every other box Cuoco was looking for.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.

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.

 

This is more fun than The Flight Attendant. Cassie was a little bit more flippant and a little more lost and reactive, I feel, to things that were going on. Now we’ve got Ava, who’s like, “This is what we’re doing. This is what needs to be done to save this marriage, to save our relationship, to get our money.” She is really, really, really pushing forward in this [podcast plan] and convincing Nathan to go on this ride with her. These are good people who make a really poor decision. We see that a lot, which is why I think why we love true crime. Most of the time it’s a normal person doing something terrible.