SAYING GOODBYE TO THE BIG BANG THEORY
It’s one of the longest courtships in TV history but when The Big Bang
Theory reaches its season 11 finale on Wednesday, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) look set to finally exchange vows after a tumultuous string of episodes including the bachelor party, the bachelorette party and some last-minute cold feet. Jim Parsons tells Jenny Cooney Carrillo how emotional it was to film the long-awaited event and talks about the pending end of the hit comedy series. How did it feel for you to film the wedding episode?
The wedding finale was very interesting. When we first approach big episodes like that, you just have to take a big breath because they’re complicated. There’s so many people involved but in this one everyone bought in. All the new people, or old people revisiting, were so good at their craft, it made work easy. Over this past season, I think all of us as a cast – but I think especially in the finale of this year – have begun to really get a vision of how fortunate we’ve been; not just career-wise, but just to explore these characters and have these friendships. It was a great joy filming that episode and unexpectedly moving for all of us.
How does it feel knowing that the next season of The Big Bang Theory, the 12th, will be the last?
It sounds strange to admit this, for a group that’s so close and has worked together so long now, but it has simply not been talked about in a wide way yet. There will need to be some sort of ‘Come to Jesus’ conversation. You don’t do something like this and not suffer a mourning period about it. It’s really going to be hard to say that final goodbye. Twelve years is a lot of somebody’s lifetime, and I don’t know if I’ve ever even lived anywhere for 12 years, so there is no preparing for it. I just recommend everyone get a good therapist ready.
Since Young
Sheldon was your idea, were you surprised by its global success?
It feels strange now, remembering when I first wrote to Chuck (Lorre, the creator of Big Bang Theory) suggesting the idea. I really thought he would say, ‘Yeah we’ve talked about this and we aren’t interested’ but instead he said that no one had ever brought it up before, so it’s a lesson to trust your instincts. One of the beautiful things they did was really make it an origin type of story, which is so similar to the origin stories of comic books and graphic novels like getting to meet Batman’s parent. But I’m glad I could hand it over to the experts and now I just come in and do the silly voiceovers.
Does the actor who plays young Sheldon (Iain Armitage) remind you of yourself as a child?
Hell no. I always say in interviews sitting beside Iain, ‘I was not as smart as Iain or as skilled as Iain and able to talk to people like Iain’ and he says, ‘Oh sure you are’, but I respond, ‘But you are nine!’ I was no dummy but the poise and sophistication and open embrace of the world he has is something I admire and still strive to be like. He’s a remarkable young man and there is just no telling what he will end up doing with his life.