Wow, thank you.
What's up, man?
Thanks for being here.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
And I need to say, thank you for being my first celebrity
interview.
Wow.
And congrats on the finale of The Big Bang Theory.
Thank you so much.
Or should I be saying I'm sorry?
How are you feeling?
I'm hung over.
I drank my weight in tequila last night.
So I am exhausted.
We shot on Tuesday.
And then yesterday, in the morning,
we got our hands imprinted in front of the Chinese Grauman
Theatre.
Nice.
It was incredible.
Huge.
And I don't know.
I don't think there's any word in any language ever written
that could describe what I'm feeling all of it.
I'm feeling sad.
I'm feeling exhilarated.
I'm feeling tired.
I'm emotionally.
I'm cried out.
I'm laughed out, all of it, so probably a little overwhelmed.
But I couldn't miss this.
I'm so happy to see you.
I'm dressing like you, and you're dressing like me.
Exactly, yeah.
What's happening?
Well, I knew what we were going to do.
You know what I mean?
I thought you were going to wear a hat.
So I wore this.
But then you didn't.
But then I let you--
but listen.
With all that emotion, man, you made history.
You guys are the longest running sitcom--
12 seasons, 279 episodes.
Wow.
So I got to know.
How was that final taping?
The final taping, I had held it together pretty much pretty
well.
But then, in the last scene that I was shooting,
they added a joke.
And I said it, and I thought I would get another chance at it,
because we shoot most takes twice.
But no, I got it.
And then they said all right, moving on.
And then that was the last words I was
going to say as that character.
So as I was walking up to my dressing room,
with every step, the realization that those were the last words
I would ever see as Raj began to really sink in.
And I cried.
I cried a lot.
It was very cathartic.
It was nice, actually.
I'm not much of a crier, so it felt really wonderful to cry.
But yeah, it was--
I'm really going to miss playing him,
because it was nice to show up to work every day
and play a character that was so pure and so
innocent and hopeful.
And I think that that's pretty rare these days.
So it's really wonderful.
And can you say yet?
Can you say what you've taken from the set to remember Raj?
Did you steal anything on the way out?
You're like, you know what?
This is the last time.
I'm going to just take this with me.
Yeah, I mean, what are they going to do, fire me?
I can say anything I want, literally.
No, I haven't actually taken anything from the set.
But we're just down here, so I think
I'm going to swing by right now because no one is there.
So I can take whatever I want.
I think I'm just going to take the whole couch.
Just drop back by, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Now, this is really, really interesting, man.
This is now 12 years ago.
You were not doing this at all.
This was your first TV show.
Is that right?
Yes, yes.
I had just gotten my master's in acting in graduate school.
And I'd spent some time at the Royal Shakespeare
Company in England.
And I'd come back.
And I was a waiter at a raw food restaurant.
Yeah, I know.
I remember I auditioned.
I didn't have a car at the time, so I rented a car
to audition for the show.
And for the final callback for Warner Brothers,
I rented the cheapest car that I could afford.
But they bumped me up because they ran out of the small cars.
And it was a Toyota Solara, Solaris, or something.
And it was a convertible.
It was white.
You was California living though, yeah.
Exactly.
And then I remember taking the top down and driving out
to Warner Brothers.
I played "California Love."
And I was like, (SINGING) California.
And I was like, I could get used to this.
You know what I mean?
Turned in the keys, went back to my job.
But it really felt. And then the universe aligned itself.
And here we are.
Absolutely, and then so many years.
So now, with this wrapping up, what are you doing this summer?
You've got time now.
What are you going to do to relax?
I'm going to eat a lot of pasta and pizza
and put on a lot of weight.
And I'm going to rent a boat and sail the south of France.
I'm going to spend a weekend in Ibiza, Ibitha,
however they pronounce it.
They're pretty cynical about that.