Kaley Cuoco’s ‘Role Play’ Can’t Even Fake Being a Good Movie
Kaley Cuoco cannot be confined. I don’t mean that in terms of the types of roles she plays—she’s always moving between three different, equally effective shades of plucky. Rather, Cuoco will not be chained to one streamer.
In the past few years, the former Big Bang Theory star has been eager to prove her skill after being tied to a network sitcom for so long, and she’s been hopping between different platforms to do it. She’s led two seasons of Max’s delectable series The Flight Attendant and four seasons as the voice of Harley Quinn in its raunchy Batman spinoff. Then there were two ventures on Peacock: a middling time travel movie followed by a super silly true crime comedy series.
Now, Cuoco is over on Prime Video with her new action-comedy Role Play, out Jan. 12. In the film, she plays only a slightly different shade of her usual character: A fast-talking, quick-witted thirtysomething in some kind of rut. This time, it’s in her marriage, as Cuoco’s character, Emma, is having trouble reconciling her career and home life with her husband, Dave (David Oyelowo). Emma is always in and out of town for work, making it hard to keep the spark alive—especially when her exhausting career of killing high-value targets for cash leaves her drained by the time she walks in the door to greet Dave and their two children.