Young Sheldon
Season 2 M-Net (*101) 19:00 Comedy
The toughest aspect of playing a 10year-old version of Sheldon Cooper in prequel series Young Sheldon (2018current) is not copying what executive producer Jim Parsons has done in the role on The Big Bang Theory (2007current). That doesn’t mean that 10year-old Iain Armitage hasn’t had a helping hand from Jim, who’s 35 older. So how did they create a young genius?
1 How, not what We know how Sheldon is as an adult, what he likes and doesn’t like. Iain focussed on why Sheldon is the way he is, “Why is he a fan of one cartoon and not another? We’ve got his starting point,” he adds.
2 Shared resources Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon were created by the same man – Chuck Lorre – and they share writers too. Jim also sits with Iain for script reads but says that he only offers Iain insight and tips if he’s asked “what would Sheldon do”.
3 Fact check Sheldon’s character bible is big enough to fill two lever-arch files. A copy is kept in the writers’ office and one on set. Jim says that this makes it “easy to make sure that if Big Bang Sheldon says something happened at age 10, we match it on this show”.
4 The real deal The maths, physics and science jargon that younger Sheldon uses is real. The team consulted professors to select computations that would be suitable for the show and easy enough for Iain to pull off naturally without sounding rehearsed.
5 Learning curve Disagree with Big Bang’s Sheldon and you’re wrong. In the prequel, he’s still open to debate, which Chuck says “makes him relatable. He doesn’t think that he’s better than everyone around him. At least not at the same level as Adult Sheldon…”