diff --git a/sdks/python/apache_beam/io/gcp/bigquery.py b/sdks/python/apache_beam/io/gcp/bigquery.py
index 27e4a26151455..0a0b1f8b7a7ea 100644
--- a/sdks/python/apache_beam/io/gcp/bigquery.py
+++ b/sdks/python/apache_beam/io/gcp/bigquery.py
@@ -293,6 +293,11 @@ def compute_table_name(row):
 from apache_beam.utils.histogram import Histogram
 from apache_beam.utils.histogram import LinearBucket
 
+try:
+  from apache_beam.io.gcp.internal.clients.bigquery import TableReference
+except ImportError:
+  TableReference = None
+
 __all__ = [
     'TableRowJsonCoder',
     'BigQueryDisposition',
@@ -1602,7 +1607,7 @@ def _compute_method(self, experiments, is_streaming_pipeline):
   def expand(self, pcoll):
     p = pcoll.pipeline
 
-    if (isinstance(self.table_reference, bigquery.TableReference) and
+    if (isinstance(self.table_reference, TableReference) and
         self.table_reference.projectId is None):
       self.table_reference.projectId = pcoll.pipeline.options.view_as(
           GoogleCloudOptions).project
@@ -1955,7 +1960,7 @@ def __init__(
       self,
       query: str = None,
       use_standard_sql: bool = False,
-      table: Union[str, bigquery.TableReference] = None,
+      table: Union[str, TableReference] = None,
       flatten_results: bool = False):
     """
     Only one of query or table should be specified.