Kaley Cuoco says she dealt with a “super dark time” following her second divorce.
The “Flight Attendant” star said in a new interview with Variety that she was left struggling to walk and even staged an intervention on herself following her separation from her second husband, equestrian Karl Cook, last year.
“Going through my divorce, it was really a super dark time,” Cuoco told the magazine. “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.”
Cuoco was dealing with the end of her marriage, while playing a character on “The Flight Attendant” who was facing obstacles of her own. Those two factors led to the actor admittedly going through “one of the hardest years of my life” and added, “I was really losing my mind.”
“It was the first time that I started therapy — I’ve been very open about that,” Cuoco said, adding that she started just as she began filming season two of the HBO Max hit.
Cuoco attends the 18th Annual Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Awards on June 2 in Beverly Hills, California.
“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 said. “I literally, like, had fire on my leg for three months. I could barely walk.”
The difficult period led to a new chapter of transparency for Cuoco.
“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,’” Cuoco explained. “It was interesting to say that out loud. And to have everyone be like, ‘Yes, we want to help!’ I’m a working woman, and so independent, and I really take pride in being able to do everything. Well, this time, I literally couldn’t.”
Cuoco split from Cook in September 2021, after three years of marriage. Before Cook, she was previously married to tennis pro Ryan Sweeting.
The “Big Bang Theory” actor is currently in a relationship with “Ozark” actor Tom Pelphrey, though she’s sworn off any future nuptials.
“I would love to have a long-lasting relationship or a partnership. But I will never get married again,” Cuoco said in a candid interview with Glamour in April. “But I believe in love because I’ve had incredible relationships. I know that they’re out there.
Days after the announcement, Cuoco was off to film season two of The Flight Attendant without much of a chance to catch her breath. In the seven months since, she’s been working through the “trauma,” as she calls it, and going to therapy for the first time in her life. “My therapist and I are working on forgiveness and forgiving myself for making mistakes,” she says. “I think that's been the hardest thing is just accepting that I’m normal and that I’m not superwoman. I highly recommend therapy to everyone out there. Even if your life is going really well. I can’t imagine life without it.”
That honesty is evident throughout our 75-minute Zoom, during which Cuoco opens up in detail about the physical toll the divorce took on her body, as well as the pressure to always put forth a joyous demeanor on set. “I am so capable and strong, and I take on so many things,” she tells me. “But this is the first time I faced something where I thought, I can’t do this alone. And it was just enough for me to voice it to my team, because…[normally] I can hide stuff. I was trying to hold everything [and everyone] up.”
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