Smooth landing
In genre-bending comedy-thriller The Flight Attendant, actress-producer Kaley Cuoco really earns her wings, writes Lauren Mitchell
When hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory came to an end in 2019 after an incredibly lucrative 12 seasons for its cast, no one could have blamed actress Kaley Cuoco, who played girl-next-door Penny, for taking a break.
Instead, Cuoco, who has been acting since the age of five, dove into the next phase of her career – starting a production company,
Yes, Norman and finding her first projects.
Along with DC Universe animation series Harley Quinn, an adaptation of Chris Bohjalian’s 2018 novel The Flight Attendant drew Cuoco into the producing world.
“[My team] had been suggesting to me to look at books and articles, and things that maybe would inspire me,” Cuoco explains in an interview with Deadline’s Anthony D’Allesandro.
“I found Flight Attendant, and I read two sentences on the Amazon description before it even came out and I got this major chill and I asked if Reese Witherspoon had the rights – I was like, ‘She must have gotten this already’. Miraculously, she hadn’t.
“So, I started working on getting the rights to it, ’cause I fell in love with the book and I thought it would be a series, and I brought it to Warner Brothers and I said
‘If you guys wanna do this with me, I think this is what will start my company.”
The resulting series, part mystery-thriller and part screwball comedy, follows Cassie (Cuoco), a flight attendant and world-class party girl who spends a luxurious night on the town with a handsome passenger from her flight to Bangkok and wakes up in a Dubai hotel room, with his dead body lying next to her, and no memory of what happened.
Over the course of the stellar first season, Cassie is compelled to come to terms with her alcoholism and address her traumatic past. The critically acclaimed role even netted Cuoco her first Emmy Award nomination.
Season two finds Cassie living sober in Los Angeles, continuing to work flights and moonlighting as a CIA asset in her spare time.
It’s not long before she becomes in caught another international intrigue after witnessing a murder on an overseas assignment. The stress of the situation brings back some personal demons for Cassie.
“I really want to experience [Cassie] trying to live this sober life and thinking that [she] faced [her] demons – Cassie’s very black-and-white – she likes an easy fix,” says Cuoco.
“I think she’s going to learn really fast that this is a lifelong process.”
■ The Flight Attendant, streaming, Binge