The Stairs Scenes On The Big Bang Theory Were Way More Complicated Than You Would Expect

The apartments that Penny, Leonard, and Sheldon call home are situated on the fourth floor of their building, with stairways on either side of the landing. There’s an elevator as well, but it hasn’t worked since Leonard’s rocket fuel mishap, as detailed in Season 3, Episode 22, “The Staircase Implementation.” As the recently published behind-the-scenes book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series” reveals, shooting scenes that take place on the stairs is an art form all its own.

Series’ director Mark Cendrowski explained, “They would write these stair scenes but you needed to time them whenever a character turned the corner.” The main problem was that the audience’s laughter could cover up the next line. “You’d realize a line is so funny that you needed to move a couple [of] lines to the next floor because the laugh was going to carry over to the next flight of stairs,” Cendrowski said. Fortunately, however, the same hall-and-stairs set was used for all the levels in the apartment, so it wasn’t too difficult to reshoot. “The set dressers had it down to a science,” the director revealed. “The numbers on the door changed, the tape [on the broken elevator door] went up, [and they would] throw a bicycle out there.”