The Flight Attendant star Kaley Cuoco confirmed she is dating fellow actor Tom Pelphrey in a May 3 Instagram post. Pelphrey, 39, is an award-winning actor who found his first taste of success on Guiding Light during the 2000s. He stars as Ben Davis in Netflix’s Ozark and appears in the new shows Outer Range and Love and Death.
Cuoco and Pelphrey took their relationship Instagram official by sharing a pair of photos together on their Instagram pages. Since then, Cuoco hasn’t been shy about her feelings for Pelphrey, often commenting on his posts. “Be hotter Pelphrey,” she jokingly wrote on May 6 when Pelphrey shared photos from his stop on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote Outer Range.
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Days before he went public with his relationship with Cuoco, Pelphrey spoke about what he is up to lately with Esquire but made no mention of the new lady in his life. He’s been working almost non-stop since October 2020.
“It’s been all work, really. Experiencing the pandemic through the lens of work,” he said. “I’m sure everybody feels a responsibility to not get anyone else sick, but it’s heightened when you’re working because you don’t want to shut down a production. I really want to go to the gym and I need to work out and stuff. You are like, ‘Is this being irresponsible?’”
Pelphrey was born in Howell, New Jersey, and graduated from Rutgers University. He made his television debut as Jonathan Randall on Guiding Light, appearing in 154 episodes between 2004 and 2009. He won the Daytime Emmy Award for Oustanding Younger Actor in a Drama Series in 2006 and 2008 and scored nominations in 2005 and 2007. After Guiding Light wrapped, he moved on to As the World Turns, appearing in 29 episodes as Mick Dante.
Pelphrey quickly transitioned from soap operas to prestige television, with roles in episodes of The Good Wife, The Following, and Banshee. In 2017, he was cast as Ward Meachum in Netflix’s divisive Marvel series Iron Fist. The cool reception of Iron First didn’t hurt his career too much, as he quickly found another gig for Netflix on Ozark. He earned a Critics’ Choice Television Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama and picked up a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination as a member of the cast.
Although Pelphrey is best known for his TV work, he has appeared in a handful of movies. His most important film role to date was playing filmmaker Joseph L. Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s Oscar-winning Mank (2020). He recently filmed American Murderer, in which he plays Jason Derek Brown, a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. Brown allegedly shot and killed an armored car guard outside a movie theater in 2004.
Pelphrey’s latest project is Outer Range, a new science fiction western released on Amazon Prime between April 15 and May 6. The series, created by Brian Watkins, stars Josh Brolin as Royal Abbott, a Wyoming rancher who discovers a strange black void on his property. Pelphrey plays Royal’s eldest son. Pelphrey also stars in HBO Max’s upcoming series Love and Death, which stars Elizabeth Olsen as a Texas housewife who murdered her friend with an ax in 1980.
In November, Pelphrey will be back in theaters with Universal’s She Said. Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan star as The New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who exposed Harvey Weinstein’s history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women in the film industry. Maria Schrader, who won an Emmy for directing Netflix’s Unorthodox, directed She Said from a script by Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
