When Big Bang Theory Nerds Collide
Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory created good chemistry by pairing Sheldon (Jim Parsons) with Amy (real-life brainiac Mayim Bialik). After Blossom, the former teen star earned her doctorate at UCLA, making her Hollywood's most famous actress with a Ph.D. We asked Bialik about her other life and our chances of seeing new couple Sheldon and Amy (aka "Shamie") get physical this season.
TV Guide Magazine: Like your character, Amy Farrah Fowler, you're a neurobiologist?
Bialik: A genuine nerd, but I'm a neuroscientist. The difference is not huge, but in the nerd world, there are subtle differences. My field was psychoneuroendocrinology.
TV Guide Magazine: What was the title of your thesis?
Bialik: "Hormone Fluctuations and Obsessive-Compulsive and Affiliated Behavior in Adolescents With Prader-Willi Syndrome."
TV Guide Magazine: In English?
Bialik: I studied adolescents with a genetic syndrome with high rates of OCD.
TV Guide Magazine: OCD? Not unlike Sheldon?
Bialik: Not unlike, but I think with him it's more a spectrum disorder. We were discussing some behavior Sheldon was enacting, and Bill Prady said to [cocreator] Chuck Lorre, "I would ask Mayim. She's the neuroscientist." I get to sort of be, like, actor crew and also nerd crew.
TV Guide Magazine: At first meeting, Amy insisted "coitus" was "off the table." Any possibility now?
Bialik: Not that I know of. I think for Sheldon, some of the resistance to touch has to do with hygiene. I really can't figure a way unless they were both in plastic suits and blindfolded, and I don't mean for that to sound kinky.
Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!