John Ross Bowie Explains Kripke’s Evil Evolution in ‘Stuart Fails to Save the Universe’

Leave it to John Ross Bowie‘s Barry Kripke to treat the end of the universe like a career opportunity. The sarcastic physicist, best known for making Sheldon Cooper’s (Jim Parsons) life miserable on The Big Bang Theory, returns in HBO Max’s Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, only this time he’s not fighting for office space at Caltech; as seen in the trailer, he’s ruling a post-apocalyptic empire.

Played to pompous perfection by Bowie, the smug physicist Kripke gets swept into a wildly absurd multiverse quest alongside comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman), geologist Bert Kibbler (Brian Posehn), and comic book store manager Denise (Lauren Lapkus) in the new sci-fi comedy, which extends the Big Bang universe above and beyond its sitcom roots into the realm of sci-fi and action adventure. The quartet is off on a misadventure after a machine built by BBT‘s Sheldon, Howard (Simon Helberg), and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) malfunctions, causing havoc in their own timeline, and thus forcing them to find a solution somewhere in the multiverse. And in one universe, Kripke is the “Supreme Leader of Pasadena.” According to Bowie, it’s exactly the kind of promotion Kripke has always believed he deserved.

Chatting with TV Insider, Bowie discussed the physicist’s trajectory, the new world order of the many universes, returning to the role of Kripke, and what to expect from Stuart.

It has been years since you last played Barry Kripke. How quickly did you find his voice again? Was it like riding a bike, or did it take some time to get back into the character?

John Ross Bowie: It was interesting. It snapped back pretty quickly. The challenge this time was that, unlike on the old show, I was there every week. For the three or four months we shot, because normally I would come in, I’d do Kripke, they wouldn’t see me for six or so months, and then I’d come back.

It was actually harder to get out of the voice this time, and I would find it carrying through to my daily life, which is rough, because both of my children have L’s in their names.

There were extra challenges presented by playing Kripke so steadily over the length of this shoot, but it came back to me pretty quickly. It’s muscular.

Kripke has essentially become a post-apocalyptic “Supreme Leader.” How much fun was it leaning into that absurd level of power? Was this the obvious next step in Kripke’s evolution?

Well, you said it, didn’t you? I mean, it is the logical next step in his evolution. You know, nature abhors a vacuum, and he will step in and take that power. That is it exactly. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that he does that.

It felt like a very natural progression for Kripke to become a totalitarian, and we even dressed him in a color that, on set, we referred to as Qaddafi Blue (laughs).

We’re just exploring how power corrupts.

How badly, though, can power corrupt the already corrupted?

That’s a really good question, but it turns out you can always get a little bit worse.

As bad as Kripke was in the “Mothership,” he actually might be a little bit worse. And then he has kind of an interesting arc throughout the rest of this series, which was fun to play. No spoilers, but what was cool about these four characters who were secondary on the original show being put front and center. That we were given a chance to flesh them out a bit more and get a clearer idea of what makes them tick, and maybe not excuse any behavior, but explain some of it, at least. So it was really fun to be back in a different facility than on the original show.

This show takes supporting characters and asks them to carry a serialized adventure. What allows Stuart, Bert, Denise, and Kripke to work as the center of the story? Why does it work with these four, and not, let’s say, Janine Davis, Mary Cooper, Leslie Winkle, and the ghost of Mrs. Wolowitz?

I think that’s a really good question. I think the chemistry of these four characters and their diverse skill sets. Kevin and Lauren are the big comic book nerds; Bert’s specialty is geology; Kripke is physics. It’s sort of the X-Men for f**k-ups.

There’s something very liberating about this particular set of skills working together that I think people will enjoy. Also, I mean, the proof is in the pudding. We had a lot of fun working together, and not that anyone you just mentioned wouldn’t have been a total blast to work with as well… and I can’t say who or who isn’t coming back.

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The four of us had a really nice time working together. It was a really fun group. We have a robust and funny text chain going. It’s really nice.

It kind of feels like a f**ked up road trip in a way.

Yeah. I think that’s a good way to put it. Sure.

With so many time-travel and multiverse stories coming from Marvel and DC right now, do you see Stuart Fails to Save the Universe fitting into that trend, or do you think it’s carved out its own niche?

It’s found its own niche in that it is really absurdistly funny. And not that I mean, the Marvel films and the DC films take great pains. There’s always good jokes in those. But we are a much more joke-forward show, you know? Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady are writing for us. I think the idea of it being a multi-dimensional road trip is really fun. I think there’s something about parallel universe tourism that is really exciting right now. And I think our own timeline is so complicated right now that there might be a thirst in America and elsewhere for people to check out other timelines and see how they’re going.

It’s a good question. I think there is something very exciting about the idea that there are other versions of this world, and indeed other versions of us out there, and the show explores that, to a point where we would sometimes, as the episodes progressed, we would start to get a little confused. And we would have to ask very specific questions about where we were in the time-space continuum, questions that we never had on Big Bang Theory. So it was a very specific kind of performance that we were doing, but it was also really, really satisfying.

We went so far afield from your initial question. Did I answer it?

No, you answered it. But now I have a question: Given that this show is so… I don’t want to say odd, but far-fetched?

You can say odd.

Well, especially considering where it started. What do you think the next spinoff evolution would be? Are you thinking medical drama? 

Well, the dirty little secret is that we can do any genre we kind of want on Stuart. We’re hopping from universe to universe. We’re praying for a Western at some point. It’s interesting. The show is odd. You don’t need to apologize for that, and it is a big tonal swing from the original, and as this interview is for TV Insider, I feel comfortable saying that the closest parallel any of us could come to would be when they took one character from The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then, like eight years later, built a one-hour drama around Lou Grant, played by Ed Asner. But even that was not the… the abrupt tonal shift. It still took place in this world. This is taking existing sitcom IP.

Just taking it into a whole new sci-fi, adventure, comedy genre that was uncharted territory for most of the creatives on this show, so it was really exciting to do that.

Given the types of universes you guys visit in the episodes, and that they’re all kind of within nerd IP, like The Matrix. Was there a specific IP you would have liked to have visited but you didn’t get a chance?

Oh, wow! Interesting. I would love to do a little more hardcore Quantum Leap time travel kind of stuff. Which may yet happen.

“Dr. Barry Kripke never returned home.” Is that how you want the series to end?

I don’t know, you know, or maybe we go back in time, and we fix something, you know, how about that? You know, there’s a lot of things we can do in history. That’s a really good question. I would love to have a sort of Time Bandits, Quantum Leap, some of the more, I hesitate to say, grounded Doctor Who episodes where there is a sense of something needs to be corrected in another era. That would be really fun to explore.

Like the show Voyagers also.

Oh, God, I remember Voyagers; was that… that was the one with John-Erik Hexum, may he rest in peace. Voyagers is another great example. Voyagers, which predates Quantum Leap.

I loved those shows growing up. I always found them really interesting and exciting, and it’s how I learned the dribs and drabs of history was [from] Time Bandits…

The first time I ever heard the word Agamemnon [was] when Sean Connery showed up and played him. It would be really fun to explore something like that.

I guess my final question is: Are there any specific Easter eggs or callbacks to Kripke’s past that fans should look out for?

There are so many. Honestly, there’s so many that: a.) I can’t say, and b.) I don’t even remember all of them.

I will say this: The show is going to reward second and third viewings because there’s all sorts of details, especially in the comic book shop. Because we’re in a different dimension every week, the comic book shop changes every week, and production design did an incredible job fleshing that world out. So, pause and look closely at the names of the comic books, depending on which universe we’re in, because there’s a lot of extra jokes peppered throughout. And, of course, there’s a ton of references to the old show.

Shoutouts to people who worked on the show. And some familiar faces in unfamiliar situations. That’s all I can say.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, Series premiere, July 23, HBO Max