At the ultimate yearly gathering of so-called nerds and fan-boys that celebrates all things geek, the cast of “The Big Bang Theory” fit right in.

The entire cast, including originals Johnny Galecki (Leonard), Jim Parsons (Sheldon), Kaley Cuoco (Penny), Simon Helberg (Wolowitz), Kunal Nayyar (Raj) and new additions Mayim Bialik (Amy) and Melissa Rauch (Bernadette), participated in a panel at Comic-Con 2011 to discuss their series alongside the executive producers.

Held during the last week of July in San Diego, the convention presents a wide variety of panels on subjects ranging from new superhero films about to hit theatres to beloved TV series from across the mainstream and sci-fi spectrums.

Taking questions from a rambunctious moderator and excited fans, “The Big Bang Theory” team had a lot to say on a wide variety of subjects. Here are a few highlights:

Jim Parsons on Sheldon being a “relatable” character:

“I think I’ve always felt empathy for him… he’s always seemed very human to me. I never suspected from the first moment I read his lines that he had any nefarious meaning or that he did lack emotion. It’s just simply his way of dealing…It is what it is, and he’s a lovely fella.”

Johnny Galecki on first hearing about the show from series creator Chuck Lorre:

“I was doing a play in New York, and Chuck and I worked together on a show called ‘Roseanne.’ He had this idea, along with this fellow Bill Prady -- he hadn’t written anything yet, but he faxed me a couple of pages a few weeks later, and we started talking about it.”

“You never know if it’s going to work…you know if you read something if you like it or not. I did, and you know not to be a fool and trust Chuck Lorre if he tells you it’s a good idea, but it really wasn’t until the first table reading and I heard everybody do their thing that I thought, ‘Now I get it, now I see it, and we might be here for a very long time.’ And I really hope we are.”

Kunal Nayyar on Raj’s big Bollywood dream sequence with Bernadette:

“It was really cool shooting that scene with Melissa. She’s a great dancer, a great singer, and very Indian inside of her system. That sounded dirty, but you know what I mean.”

Simon Helberg on if they ever improv on the series:

“No, how could we make up those lines? It’s insane. I can’t even imagine how they are written down. So we memorize them and say them how they are, and lean on the writers a whole lot. Its tremendous writing and it’s a balance of performance and everything.”

Melissa Rauch on whether she had a sketch comedy background (after doing a great impression of Wolowitz’s mother and riffing on Comic-con):

“I actually started in standup comedy in New York years ago, and I came out here to pursue stuff like this. I don’t do standup much anymore, I just do Wolowitz impersonations around town.”

Mayim Bialik on how she went from “Blossom” to “Big Bang”:

“I fell in love with biology when I was a teenager on ‘Blossom’ and I really wanted to pursue academia when I finished. I was two years out of high school and I did my undergrad in science. I loved what I was studying, and that’s why many of us go onto a PhD. If there’s not much else going on and you love what you’re doing and you don’t want to join the real world. That’s what happened.”

“I did audition for the show. I had never watched the show, I had heard of it. I was told they needed a female Jim Parsons and I said, ‘Who is Jim Parsons?’ And so I Googled Jim Parsons the night before the audition and I did my best Jim Parsons and I guess it was good enough…and on my resume, under ‘Miscellany’, it says PhD neuroscience, and I believe it was Bill Prady who said, ‘Wait a second, do you really have a PhD in neuroscience?’ And I said, ‘Yes I do,’ and then I left and then I got the call that I got the job. I don’t consult (on the series), but I get a twitch if there’s a word pronounced the way it shouldn’t be said according to my neuroscience training.”

Executive producer Bill Prady on the difference between Sheldon and Amy:

“Sheldon missed out on a lot and he doesn’t care, Amy missed out on a lot and she desperately wants it, so we’ve always said that the difference between Sheldon and Amy is that Amy is game. Amy wants to have the experiences she didn’t have, and some of them seem to burn within her loins.”

About Tyrone Warner

Tyrone Warner has been with CTV.ca since 2005, covering news, entertainment and everything related to CTV. When he’s away from the computer, you can find him writing, recording and performing his own music, running his own record label and dabbling in photography, painting and creative collage. Follow him on Twitter!