There’s no denying the success of Chuck Lorre, who’s not only built an empire of sitcom success but a separate one with the CBS series  The Big Bang Theory (alongside co-creator Bill Prady) with its prequel spinoffs Young Sheldon, Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage, and the upcoming true sequel series, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.

While the earlier two series expand on the world from Jim Parson’s Sheldon Cooper and his family, the Max series starring Kevin Sussman, who played the lovable sad sack comic store owner the TBBT crew hung out with, will be set in the present.

Before we go on, there’s a matter of reflecting on what Lorre started with when TBBT and its genesis with its unaired pilot before the reshot version premiered in 2007.

The Bookie creator appeared on The Official Big Bang Theory Podcast alongside former chairman of Warner Bros TV Peter Roth to discuss the unaired pilot that featured leads Johnny Galecki’s Leonard Hofstadter and Parsons’s Sheldon, two female characters, and the reworked pilot that featured Galecki, Parsons, Kaley Cuoco’s Penny, Simon Helberg’s Howard Wolowitz, and Kunal Nayyar’s Raj Koothrappali. Lorre broke down how he grew to the blue-collar Penny to evolve beyond clichés.