But first, aSPOILER ALERT!Dont read unless you watched the hour-long series finale of the CBS sitcom.
We had a lot of big pieces we knew we were driving toward.
It was really important for all of us to give everybody a moment.
Credit: Michael Yarish/CBS
But they were happy tears.
Its a place we love, thats why its hard to say goodbye.
But there was a beautiful moment with the playback of the last scene.
It was something that we shot the previous day, so the cast came and sat with us.
With the audience there, we all watched that playback together.
Thats a special moment that I will take with me.
It was always the script.
Did you think a lot about how you wanted to address the elevator?We did.
We thought about it a lot and we had a couple of different ideas.
The elevator could be one final straw.
It was also going to be more of a surprise.
We didnt expect it to happen that early in the first part of the two-parter.
It was really exciting to watch that scene live in front of the whole audience for the first time.
On TV it will be shorter than that.
It was a special moment to us.
To bring that back around in the finale felt important.
You got a little dark there when Sheldon was acting like a real butthead.
Why did you go there?It felt earned.
They are done with tiptoeing around him.
So having Amy really go at him and not let him off the hook felt right.
The way she played it was so raw and real.
It didnt seem to be necessary.
We dont ever do that.
But it felt right for this moment and right for his turn at the end.
It felt like a really fun get.
A lot of the writers are hugeBuffyfans.
It felt like a nerdier [choice] than going for whoever is the flashiest movie star.
It felt real to the show and the characters.
Having Jim ask, Is that Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
was magical.It was fun to watch that during the playback.
It got such a huge response from the studio audience, you didnt even hear Sarahs line.
The audience was still cheering for her.
It made us feel like we made the right choice.
She said, Just so you know, this is not a date.
Raj replied, I know.
Then she says, So why are you holding my hand?
I dont think the audience heard any of that.
We met the Wolowitz kids!
When was that decision made?That was also Chucks idea.
That wasnt even in the original breaking of the finale.
When we got to the scene, Chuck said, Why dont we just do it?
Why dont we put them in?
We didnt need to make a big deal of it.
It seemed like a fun little easter egg to put them in at the end.
Did you go back and forth about whether to invite more former guest stars?Not really.
But we really wanted it to be focused on the main cast.
This was our chance to say goodbye.
Its the audiences chance to say goodbye.
We didnt want to fill it up with a bunch of returning guest stars.
A lot of the stuff that went into the cut is actually from the audience show.
A different energy comes from when the audience is there.
How did you all feel about the final product?Incredibly proud of it.
This has been a thing we have been thinking about for a long time.
Its been weighing heavy on all of us.
We really wanted to do the end of this show justice, and the end of these characters justice.
So that certainly has been a bit of stress for the last few months.
To watch it all come together as well as it did is really rewarding.
They have been tagging everything.
I did slip the whole couch under my jacket, though.
So will we see another iteration of these characters someday?Um, I dont know.
That probably is slightly above my pay grade.
For me personally, its hard to think of any of these characters without the others.
To me, they live together as a family.
Its hard for me to imagine them operating independently.
