Kaley Cuoco says Botox mistake left her face frozen during filming for Big Bang Theory

Kaley Cuoco has shared that her experience with Botox left her unable to move her face while trying to tell jokes as Penny on The Big Bang Theory.

During Tuesday’s episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, the actor spoke to host Amanda Hirsch about her decision to get the injection and what she learned through the trial-and-error process.

“It was deep into the show, like halfway maybe. I just wanted to do a little Botox,” Cuoco said about her time on the CBS sitcom, which ran from 2007 to 2019. “I did my forehead and all this stuff. And I was so excited.”

However, upon arriving back on set, she realized she could no longer move her forehead as needed for her role on the show.

“It was the same week there is a scene where I have to, like, really do this thing with my face [and] I could not move,” Cuoco said, adding, “I was literally doing these jokes, and nothing moved. My forehead didn’t move, and it looked like I was trying to move it.”

She continued: “The fact that no one said anything, they probably were thinking it… I couldn’t believe how bad it looked. And that’s when I thought, ‘whoa’, like we don’t need the… Let’s calm it down.”

Despite the original setback, Cuoco continued to receive Botox injections, but made sure that her forehead remained untouched.

“I love a little Botox,” she said as she pointed out where she receives the injections, including the outside area of her eyes and on her neck to smooth out any ‘lines.’

The Vanished actor is not the only celebrity to open up about the negative effects of cosmetic procedures. In December 2024, Meghan Trainor admitted during an episode of her Workin’ On It with Meghan Trainor & Ryan Trainor podcast that she received “too much Botox” and could no longer smile.

“I got too much Botox, and I need help,” she said at the time. “I messed up. I’ve had Botox, like, a handful of times … just my forehead.”

The singer also admitted that there was one cosmetic procedure that she regretted — lip filler.

“Someone convinced me with my little lips that if you did a lip flip, you put filler right above your upper lip, that you could have a beautiful flip on your upper lip,” she said. “And I could have one for the first time in my whole 30 years of living — it was not true.”

After these procedures, she admitted that she couldn’t smile as large as she would like to.