If this is the upside-down for Kaley Cuoco, then she has no need for right-side up.
"I am so much better now!" the actress told Variety this past summer, reflecting on finding "light at the end of the tunnel" in the wake of her second divorce. "I came out of it a couple months ago, and life totally flipped upside down."
Of course, everything went topsy-turvy for Cuoco in the best possible way: The 36-year-old, a three-time Emmy nominee as a producer and star of the darkly comedic series The Flight Attendant, is now preparing for the role of a lifetime.
"Baby girl Pelphrey coming 2023," the pregnant star shared Oct. 11 on Instagram, confirming that she and boyfriend Tom Pelphrey are going to be first-time parents. "Beyond blessed and over the moon."
Talking to USA Today in May, Cuoco recalled their meet-cute (albeit one totally masterminded by the manager they share) at the Ozark premiere just a month beforehand.
"I heard his voice, and I turned around, and it was like my life was over, or just starting," she said. "It hit me. It was love at first sight. We were immediately connected. I do feel like I've known him my whole life, but I wasn't ready for him. We're ready to build a life together."
Confirmed.
And while Cuoco's first to admit that she went through some stuff on the way to this "magical point in time," as she described it to E! News at the Meet Cute premiere in September, she's not one to regret any of the twists her journey took along the way.
"That's why I'd never want actual time travel," she explained, "because it would really mess with the real time of what your life needs to be."
Here's a quick trip down memory lane as Cuoco enjoys where the long, winding road has taken her:
Cuoco has been acting for most of her life, notching her first IMDb credit at the age of 7 in the very intense-sounding 1992 TV movie Quicksand: No Escape. Which subsequently meant there was no escaping the cameras as a teenager.
In 2002, Cuoco scored her breakout role playing John Ritter's daughter on 8 Simple Rules, and The Young and the Restless actor Thad Luckinbill made for suitable red carpet arm candy.
A couple years later Cuoco was linked to future Gossip Girl actor Kevin Zegers after they starred in the spooky 2004 TV movie The Hollow together.
But whether there was anything serious between them or not, there was nothing but love when they reunited in May 2022 at the John Ritter Foundation From the Heart LA Gala to honor the late actor (who died suddenly in 2003 during production on the second season of 8 Simple Rules). Zegers had played Ritter's son in the 1999 TV movie It Came From the Sky.
"It's been 20 years since we first met," Cuoco captioned a pic of her and Zegers, who shares two kids with wife Jaime Feld. "John Ritter was our surrogate Dad. So happy to spend the night together remembering our friend and raising some money for the @johnritterfoundation."
Thanks to a 12-season run on The Big Bang Theory that began in 2007, countless fans have been invested in Cuoco's happiness onscreen and off—though, ironically, Leonard-and-Penny shippers may not have realized they were rooting for two couples at once.
"All the scenes up until we actually got together in real life, it was obvious there was always something there," Cuoco recalled of her secret real-life romance with co-star Johnny Galecki, as quoted in Jessicas Radloff's recently released oral history of the hit CBS sitcom. "There was chemistry, and we were crushing on each other. That was the whole first season until we actually got together for real."
At Comic-Con, they'd pretend to say goodnight in the hotel lobby with a friendly hug, and then, Cuoco said, "we were like little mice in the night, running back and forth to each other's rooms, trying not to be noticed. I mean, who did we think we were?"
Just a couple of colleagues who quietly dated for almost two years—emphasis on the quiet so as to not disturb the delicate ecosystem of The Big Bang Theory universe. And Nobel Prizes for maturity all around, because when Cuoco and Galecki exited each other's romantic orbit, Penny and Leonard's chemistry wasn't affected in the slightest.
"Johnny is actually one of my best friends," Cuoco told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live in 2015. "It's a situation that ended well. I understand sometimes it doesn't. It could have gone horrible."
Having successfully earned her master's in privacy, Cuoco didn't up the celebrity couple ante when she started dating again—but at least people knew she was out and about.
And when Josh "Lazie" Resnik, an addiction counselor and briefly the bassist for the metal band Danzig, proposed in October 2011, she said yes.
"The surprise proposal took place during a quiet date night at home," her rep told People at the time. "The couple are very happy and excited to begin planning their wedding."
They did not make it out of the planning stage, however, and in March 2012 Cuoco confirmed she was no longer engaged.
In April 2012, Cuoco was ready to mingle again, sharing a courtside kiss with Pepper singer Bret Bollinger at Los Angeles' Staples Center while the Lakers played the Portland Trailblazers.
Though attention wasn't exactly unpaid to Cuoco as her celebrity grew, she has said that nothing compared to the 10 days of 24/7 attention that came with her brief 2013 summer romance with Henry Cavill.
"I had no one following me until I met Superman," she told Cosmopolitan in 2014. "I've been in this business for 20 years, and my whole life, I could go anywhere, do anything. There had not been one paparazzi photo of me until like several months ago. The recognition was crazy."
So perhaps scrutiny was their kryptonite.
Cuoco and Cavill returned to earth in July 2013. On New Year's Eve of that same year, Cuoco married tennis player Ryan Sweeting.
"I admit it happened fast, but that's who I am," she told Cosmo in 2014 of tying the knot after barely five months together. "When we met, I knew he was the one."
He might have been, but the guy he turned into was not, and Cuoco announced in September 2015 that they were divorcing.
"I married someone the first time who completely changed," she reflected to Cosmo in 2018. "The person I ended up with was not the person I originally met. And that wasn't my fault—that was his."
Cuoco camouflaged the "12-31" commemorative wedding date tattoo on her back with a larger illustration of a moth. "The significance is, it was big enough to cover the numbers," she quipped to Ellen DeGeneres.
Admittedly wary of marriage but excited to be in love again, Cuoco was back in the saddle again after meeting competitive equestrian Karl Cook in early 2016.
"It's horses 24/7," she gushed to the New York Post in 2017 of their essential shared interest. "Most guys don't understand why you'd rather spend 10 hours in your barn with your horse, in s--t up to your knees, than come visit them. But when you're a horse girl, that's it!"
They announced their engagement in November 2017 and swapped vows on June 30, 2018. Though, interestingly enough, they continued to maintain separate households (they got married at his horse ranch), which Cuoco acknowledged was an "unconventional" arrangement.
Their "separate lives" finally converged when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and they decided to move in together. "It's been great for our relationship," Cuoco said in a remote appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2020. "And we like each other, we realized, which is even better."
But liking each other is only half the battle. The pair confirmed Sept. 3, 2021, that they were splitting up. "Despite a deep love and respect for one another, we have realized that our current paths have taken us in opposite directions," they said in a joint statement. "We have both shared so much of our journey publicly so while we would prefer to keep this aspect of our personal life private, we wanted to be forthcoming in our truth together."
And then it was time to go back to work on the second season of The Flight Attendant.
"Going through my divorce, it was really a super dark time," Cuoco told Variety. "I just didn't know how to deal with it. 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."
In fact, the episode she submitted this year to highlight her season two performance for Emmy consideration featured an intense scene that drew heavily from her own emotional state at the time. Which wasn't necessarily a healthy thing, though she was nominated.
Used to powering through as if everything was fine, this time she couldn't fake it. "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," she said. "And things aren't always so perfect. One month in, I had an intervention on myself in my trailer—all my producers were in there. And I said, 'I need help.'"
But then, as Cuoco told E! News in September, after spending a lot of time "kind of figuring myself out," she met Tom Pelphrey "and everything changed."
Set up by their shared manager, Andrea Pett-Joseph, they met at the Ozark final season premiere in April and now they've got a daughter on the way. As they say, timing is everything.
"I don't even look at him and say, 'Where have you been all my life? Why didn't I meet you sooner?'" Cuoco told USA Today in May. "I don't wish that, and he doesn't either because I had to go through a lot of s--t and really look at myself in the mirror and the things that I have [messed up] over my past 10 years that I haven't dealt with."
She was "really not interested" in getting married again, she said, but was "at another phase in my life where I want to have a deep partnership. And it hits you like a wave and you're like, 'Whoa, I've never had that.' I've never gone deep enough. I've never faced my own issues the way that I have this past year. In the last nine months, I've done a complete 180. I don't think this relationship would be what it is if I didn't go through all of that."