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“I’ve always wanted to work in a bigger genre than what we were doing in front of the audience,� he says. Dabbling in special effects and computer graphics seemed intriguing.

Lorre told Kevin Sussman to keep him in the loop about future work. He saw Sussman’s Stuart as the lead in his next generation story.

“I told my wife he said, ‘Keep me in the loop,’ and he was obviously just being polite but that was nice of him,� Sussman says. 

Lorre shared the idea with others but didn’t pitch it because he didn’t think Warner Bros. executives were interested.

“You grow accustomed to failure,� he says. “No one is interested in helping you pursue this. And then the company gets sold three, four times and somebody comes along and says, ‘You know what? Do that.’�

Suddenly, “Stuart Fails to Save the Universe� had new life.

Now, seven years after the end of “Big Bang,� the portal is open, and Stuart and his friends, Bert, Kripke and Denise, are hurtling through multiple universes. In each episode they encounter new worlds — and familiar faces.

Lorre and company wanted to get other “Big Bang� alums to appear in the episodes, but schedules didn’t work out. Those who did accept the invitation played characters other than the ones they played on “Big Bang.� 

“The people who got to come back really enjoyed getting to do something completely out of their comfort zone,� says John Ross Bowie, who plays Kripke.

Similarly, “Stuart’s� stars were eager to step into the spotlight. On “Big Bang,� Sussman’s Stuart frequently milled in the back of scenes. And, since he used to work at a comic bookstore, “I just did what I did there — took inventory. I had the clipboard� and knew how to look believable.

Now, in “Stuart,� he has a heavier lift and chemistry with Bowie, Brian Posehn and Lauren Lapkus, his “Big Bang� co-stars. 

“There was some natural chemistry there, which was great,� Lapkus says. “The way the scripts unfold, I feel like we come together really well.�

Adds Posehn, “From the first day, I felt like, ‘Oh, this is going to work.’�

“I thought we’d found a wonderful balance of the four main characters,� Lorre says. “The only thing that changed was the stakes. The stakes are insanely high. The characters are characters we’d all fallen in love with long ago.�

When they were on “Big Bang,� audiences wanted to see more of them. “We always said that it was a strong bench,� executive producer Bill Prady says. “We were never writing away from a performer. You could go to anybody. And to have that experience again as a writer was just incredible.�

In the 10 episodes of “Stuart,� the foursome drops into all kinds of worlds and find plenty of inspiration.

The variety works, Prady says, because the characters are interesting people. "You don’t get enough time with any of them, and you want to spend time finding out about more of them,� he says.

The “Big Bang� universe is about outliers, Lorre adds.

“Despite enormous, sophisticated scientific minds, they were incompetent in the real world," he says. "Aside from Sheldon, they wanted to participate but didn’t know how … and that’s universal. That’s how I was able to approach these characters, because I really had no way to join them as quantum physicists. They were brilliant, brilliant minds that were struggling to be part of everyday life.�