Kaley Cuoco may play a flight attendant on TV, but nothing could’ve prepared her for the drama that ensued during her first flight with her baby over Thanksgiving.
During a stop by “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Monday, Cuoco told a story about flying with her now 9-month-old daughter, Matilda, and how a fellow passenger wasn’t helpful to her and her boyfriend, fellow actor Tom Pelphrey.
Cuoco said she was “so terrified” to fly with Matilda that she and Pelphrey took every precaution possible, including bringing Matilda’s sound machine on the flight in order to get her to sleep.
“So she’s crying [on the plane],” the actor said. “She finally falls asleep and she’s on Tom, and the sound machine is on and we were finally like [ugh].”
But for one passenger in particular, things were just getting started.
Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube
“The steward comes over and he’s like, ‘Hey, one of our passengers would love it if you would turn the sound machine off’ … and I’m sitting there and I’m like, ‘Oh my god. Oh my god,’” Cuoco said.
“And I can feel Tom be like, ‘Hey, ask the passenger if she wants to hold our screaming child when we turn it off.’ I mean, the ice went into his veins,” she continued.
While Kimmel expressed sympathy for the flight attendant that had to deliver the message, Cuoco said she and her husband “were so angry” at the passenger.
“So then we landed, and it was the woman right in front of us. And so we get up and now Matilda is like, ‘Haha, life is great.’ The lady turns around and she goes, ‘Oh, so your daughter does know how to smile,‘” the “Big Bang Theory” actor said. “It was in that moment where I understood why women end up on ‘Dateline.’ I could have strangled her.”
“I could have thrown that woman off the plane,” Cuoco added, before advocating for people to be more understanding of babies (and their parents) on planes.
Cuoco announced that she and Pelphrey were expecting back in October 2022. They later welcomed their daughter, Matilda Carmine Richie Pelphrey, in March 2023.
The actor previously revealed that having a kid “just wasn’t on my radar” until she met her now-partner.
“As a young girl I dreamed of it, but I became involved in my career,” she told Emmy magazine back in May. “Then when we met, it was instantaneous — ‘Oh my God, I want to have a kid with you.’”