Kaley Cuoco is getting honest about how she felt following her divorce from ex-husband Karl Cook.
After three years of marriage, the “Flight Attendant” star and professional equestrian hit turbulent times, separating in September 2021. Cuoco shared in an interview with Variety that she threw herself an intervention following their split and called it “a super dark time.”
She began by explaining how filming Season Two of the hit HBO Max show was “one of the hardest years of my life. Not only personally, but doing this character that was so tormented.”
To cope, Cuoco decided to seek therapy for the first time. “Just because I was going through so much right before we started shooting,” she elaborated. “It was horrible. And I developed a stress rash that ran all the way down my body for three straight months that wouldn’t go away.”
She also asked her “Flight Attendant” and good friend Zosia Mamet to move in with her, explaining “I really needed someone with me. I was really losing my mind.”
“It was the loneliest I’ve ever felt, and I am not really someone to share that,” the former “The Big Bang Theory” star added. I’ve been very open about it, because I think for the first time, I wanted people to know that things just aren’t always what they seem. And things aren’t always so perfect.”
One month into filming the show’s second season, she said, “I had an intervention on myself in my trailer — all my producers were in there. And I said, ‘I need help.’”
She said it “was interesting to say that out loud” and to have people so willing to help her. And while she considers herself a working and independent woman, at that point in her life, she said, “I literally couldn’t.”
“Going through my divorce, it was really a super dark time. I just didn’t know how to deal with it,” Cuoco, who finalized her divorce from Cook in June, per People, said. “I was throwing myself into work to deny my depression, and how upset I was. Unfortunately, the character was so depressed that it wasn’t helping me! I was really, really, really struggling. A lot of tears.”
She found her personal life spilling into her work, with the very emotional and intense scenes she had to film as the show’s lead, Cassie.
“The trauma I was going through probably helped whatever I needed to do for this season. Did I mean for that to happen? Oh my God, no. Did I want that to happen? No,” she said. “It was so life-imitating-art at certain moments that it was eerie.”
One storyline in particular really affected the Emmy-nominated actor.
“The scene where I break up with Marco — I mean, I could not breathe. I just went in the bathroom, and I literally thought I was going to have a panic attack,” she recalled. “Not that what happened to them happened to us. That’s not what I’m saying. It was just the whole idea of the breakup, and saying the words.”
Cuoco was also previously married to Ryan Sweeting from 2013 to 2015. The actor is currently dating “Ozark” star Tom Pelphrey, and said she’s “so much better now!”
“I came out of it a couple months ago, and life totally flipped upside down. Everyone kept saying there’s going to be a light at the end of this tunnel, and I didn’t believe it until it happened,” she said.
In a July Instagram post celebrating Pelphrey’s birthday, Cuoco credited the actor for “(saving) me in all the ways.”
In her interview, Cuoco shared a message to those who feel like they’ve hit a low point, expressing, “And now I can tell other people that have the worst years of their life: It’s gonna get better.”