“The Big Bang Theory” prequel “Young Sheldon” faced just about every challenge you might expect from a spin-off of a wildly popular sitcom. Apart from tackling several events that have been referenced on the original show and making some creative decisions that concerned “Young Sheldon” co-creator Chuck Lorre, the show also centered on a younger version of the most popular “The Big Bang Theory” character, Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons).
This put some pretty massive expectations on the young main actor’s shoulders. History has proved that Iain Armitage excelled in the role. However, the process of doing so was by no means easy — at least, if you ask Parsons, who has revealed that Armitage’s audition process was even more challenging than you might have expected. The reason, as Parsons told ET Online during a 2017 joint interview with Armitage, was that Lorre and co-creator Steven Molaro opted to throw the young actor in the deep end with some extremely difficult material:
“His mother taped him at his grandmother’s house over Christmas. Chuck and Steve wrote this ridiculously long, complicated monologue, which was not in the script. I think it was kind of a trial by fire thing — we don’t know if we’re going to write this long for this character, but they need to be prepared for it.”
Parsons was initially skeptical of Young Sheldon, but came to appreciate both the show and Armitage
To hear Jim Parsons praise “Young Sheldon” today might have surprised everyone — including Parsons himself — when the prequel was still in very early planning stages. While “The Big Bang Theory” star ultimately served as the show’s executive producer and narrator, and even appeared in front of the camera in the series finale, he almost rejected “Young Sheldon” at first because he simply wasn’t particularly keen on going back to the character.
The show’s writing ended up convincing him to jump aboard — and, as his glowing comments about Armitage prove, he immediately found his younger colleague’s work highly impressive. Here’s how he described Armitage’s approach to acting in the ET Online interview:
“You are having fun and it’s been really inspirational to watch. There’s just a way in which he’s tackling all this that is so such fun and such joy of the process … You’re a reminder to, I think, anybody who’s been doing it for a while to [see] how much fun it is.”
