Mayim Bialik Had Trouble Filming This Pivotal Scene In The Big Bang Theory

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It took a while for "Shamy" (or Sheldon's relationship with Amy) to arrive at its glorious payoff in "The Big Bang Theory." In fact, it took 11 long seasons, or eight if you're counting from Mayim Bialik's actual introduction as Amy Farrah Fowler at the very end of Season 3. When it finally did happen, even the cast felt the weight of the moment. The wedding of Amy and Sheldon Cooper capped Season 11's finale, "The Bow Tie Asymmetry," and it had to deliver on the moment fans had waited almost a decade for. Unfortunately, the happiest day in Amy's fictional life made for a very tough shoot for the woman actually wearing the dress, since the script kept unwittingly yanking Bialik's real-life experience into the shoot.

Bialik, who is otherwise very similar to her character, wrote about filming the important scene on her website, Grok Nation. There, the actor admitted she was worried about a cliffhanger that might ruin everything for Amy. What's more, Bialik is divorced in real life, which meant that even zipping into a mock bridal gown to recite pretend vows as a fictional character felt like revisiting a chapter of her own past she'd rather leave shut. " ... as a divorced woman, it's hard to revisit that moment and those decisions," she wrote. "It's still painful to think about putting on the dress you take vows in. The dress that is in every picture of the perfect happy life you think you will have when you're young and getting married."

The actor married Michael Stone in August 2003 after meeting him at UCLA, the place where she got her PhD; they announced their divorce due to irreconcilable differences in November 2012. Bialik was never the same after divorcing Stone, which explains her mixed emotions about Amy's big day.

Her old marriage wasn't the only thing weighing on Mayim Bialik during this pivotal scene. The storybook bride aesthetic was another source of unease. "Wearing a wedding dress is not comfortable for me," she explained in the same blog post. "Too frilly, too feminine, too... predictable." On top of that, Bialik had also suffered "a series of antibiotic-needing bacterial illnesses and was not allowed to work out for a month," leaving her self-conscious about her weight on the one day Amy was meant to glow. However, when Bialik got into Amy's wedding dress, which was anything but minimal, the joy was fortunately contagious enough to get through to her. "I felt beautiful. Because Amy felt beautiful," she wrote.

The finale, "The Bow Tie Asymmetry," involved Sheldon fussing over a bow tie he couldn't get perfectly even — until Amy points out that a little asymmetry can actually look good. That offhand remark then detonates into his "super-asymmetry" breakthrough, which brings the pair's relationship arc together. So, Bialik standing on the set cataloguing her own supposed flaws is rather poetic in hindsight.

Despite her reservations and troubles on the big day, Bialik and Jim Parson's wholesome relationship as friends off-camera allowed the scene to carry real emotional weight. In fact, as he told Jessica Radloff in the book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," Parsons once pushed to keep Amy from being written off in Season 4, telling one of the producers, "I will not let this character go without a fight" (via Entertainment Weekly). It's a good thing he did, because the chemistry the two built is exactly what made the vows land as hard as they did in the Season 11 finale, even with Bialik's original discomfort.