By Kellie Freeze
In September, we got a sneak peek at the life of The Big Bang Theory‘s Sheldon Cooper as a 9-year-old high-school freshman in East Texas. CBS immediately ordered a full season of the kinder, gentler, more family-friendly series Young Sheldon, which stars Iain Armitage (Big Little Lies) as the young version of the outrageous character created by Jim Parsons. Parsons executive produces the series and serves as narrator.
Young Sheldon (Thursdays beginning Nov. 2) offers a charmingly insightful look into the provenance of Sheldon’s many quirks and how his life was shaped by his family, which includes his polar-opposite twin sister (scene-stealer Raegan Revord), his older brother who is suddenly his classmate (Montana Jordan), his football-loving dad (Lance Barber), his supportive mom (Zoe Perry, real-life daughter of Sheldon’s mom on The Big Bang Theory, Laurie Metcalf) and his Meemaw (Annie Potts).
While Parsons’ grownup character is a comic-book-loving, T-shirt-wearing, caustic bottle of snark, Armitage’s version is innocent and charming (and geekily clad in a bowtie) as he discovers what life has in store for a big brain in a small town.
Young Sheldon is mega-producer Chuck Lorre’s first foray out of the multi-camera sitcom universe he’s dominated (Two and a Half Men, Mom, Mike & Molly and, of course, The Big Bang Theory), and he admits that if his sweet, narration-based single-camera series feels familiar, it’s intentional. “We absolutely discussed [The] Wonder Years when we were writing,” he said at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. “I never worked with a narration before, and narration changes the way you write. And so we looked for inspiration to shows that used it beautifully. Nobody did it better than The Wonder Years.”
While most of Parsons’ involvement in the prequel series will be limited to the voice-over booth, the actor reveals that he was on set for the shooting of the series’ pilot. “I was able to interact with Iain a lot and kind of discuss certain things that are peculiar to this character. And whether it was just lines or moments in general or Sheldon’s take on the world, you know, it’s an interesting topic for us to go over together.” Armitage says that having Parsons on set helped him discover Sheldon’s nuances and master the character’s signature catchphrase, which he says they practiced “a bazinga amount of time, I think.”
Lorre reveals that while it hasn’t happened yet, there is potential for Young Sheldon to influence The Big Bang Theory. “We’ve discussed the possibility that the stories we tell in Young Sheldon can echo into The Big Bang Theory. There are people that could come into his life in 1989 and have an impact on him, and we might meet them on The Big Bang Theory 30 years later. So we are definitely discussing the ripple effect that the show is going to have going forward in time.”
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