Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, creators of “The Big Bang Theory,” told EW last September that Amy’s first true love isn’t Sheldon — it’s Penny (Kaley Cuoco). When Amy meets Sheldon for the first time, she makes it clear that she’s only there because of an agreement with her mother that she’ll go on one date per year. While Amy doesn’t need a man, she does want friends.
“She wanted girlfriends and a social life with other women because she was denied that as a child,” Lorre said. “That was the first breakthrough with her character. It wasn’t with Sheldon, it was with the girls.”
Thanks to Penny and Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch), Amy gets to experience everything she missed out on as a girl, like sleepovers, shopping, and getting to call someone her “bestie.” Prady said, “She got to go through the kind of adolescence she wished she could have gone through as a kid.”
Much of Amy’s desire to fit in was inspired by the real-life high school struggles of the writer and executive producer Steve Molaro. In “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” he said it was cathartic to see the pretty and popular Penny embrace Amy as her friend. Lorre praised Molaro for adding this personal touch, noting that it “made it a better show, a richer show, and it opened the door to stories that wouldn’t have been told otherwise.”
