Iain Armitage, who plays Young Sheldon, remembers how actively engaged Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory was in developing the CBS prequel series.
Iain Armitage describes Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory’s involvement in launching Young Sheldon. Considering how well-liked the geek-focused sitcom was, CBS decided to develop a spin-off in 2017.
Young Sheldon explores, as the headline indicates, the main character’s formative years with his family in Texas before he relocated and established in Pasadena in The Big Bang Theory.
This required the network to hire a completely different actor, who eventually turned out to be Armitage, to play the young version of the socially awkward genius.
Parsons plays a significant role in Young Sheldon even though a different actor plays Sheldon Cooper. In addition to serving as the show’s producer, he also serves as an older Sheldon who narrates the prequel series set years after the conclusion of The Big Bang Theory.
Before that, though, Parsons provided crucial support to the CBS prequel’s development and made sure that Sheldon would play a genuine representation of the character who viewers first encountered and fell in love with on The Big Bang Theory.
Armitage reminisced about Parsons’ early involvement in the production of Young Sheldon in an interview with The Creative Coalition.
As it happens, the actor would pitch in and read the scripts for the mini version of the adored geeky physicist, for the remainder of the actors would have a solid notion of what engaging with Sheldon would experience. At the same time, he learned the character’s quirks.
Check out what Armitage said below:
He and I collaborated mainly on the season 1 pilot and the first several episodes. However, he would deliver the sentences alongside the other cast and crew in Sheldon’s manner to provide a sense of how he might do it or talk about how Sheldon thinks, conducts, or interacts. That was quite beneficial, but since you would like to be sufficient to convey enough of the personality to the role so that it feels like the personality you know and respect. And it’s fascinating and gives a great suggestion of the character.
More about Young Sheldon:
Young Sheldon co-starred with The Big Bang Theory in its first two seasons of broadcasting. But since the nerd-focused sitcom’s run ended in 2019, its prequel series has indeed been entirely on its own, and while it hasn’t quite attained the same level of popularity as its parent show, Young Sheldon has emerged as CBS’ top comedy.
This is primarily because it successfully conveys that Armitage’s portrayal of the socially awkward genius develops into the character that Parsons portrayed for 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory.
Although Young Sheldon has many plot discrepancies with its parent series, The Big Bang Theory, it is still entertaining to watch for old The Big Bang Theory fans.
It is debatable that this remains the essential aspect of the prequel show, even though it has begun to broaden its storytelling by focusing more on the remainder of the Cooper family.
Ultimately, Parsons’ strategy was more beneficial than merely giving Armitage advice on how to behave and sound like Sheldon.
The Big Bang Theory actor was better positioned to teach how to portray the characterization by using the then-nine-year-old child rather than requiring his contemporaries to impersonate him merely.
After five seasons of the turn, it’s correct to conclude that Armitage has brilliantly managed to make the characters his own, even though Parsons will always be associated with Sheldon Cooper.
Fortunately for the show’s viewers, Young Sheldon has already been committed for seasons 6 and 7, so he still has a few more assured years to do so.