Jim Parsons —Ruben V. Nepales
LOS ANGELES—“It happened at curtain call,” Jim Parsons said with a smile, stressing the irony that he stumbled and sustained a fracture on his right foot not during the performance of “The Boys in the Band.” But after, when he was walking out for a curtain call at the Booth Theatre, where the first Broadway production of the groundbreaking play runs till Aug. 12.
So, on this recent morning in New York, Jim Parsons walked into a hotel room with his right foot encased in an orthopedic boot. “It’s not bad,” said “The Big Bang Theory” star. “Modern medicine is a miracle. If you were walking barefoot, you’d be in excruciating pain. But I feel almost nothing when I’m walking in this boot.”
Jim’s success as Sheldon Cooper in the geek comedy that we’ve been loving for years has enabled him to produce a spin-off series, “Young Sheldon,” with Iain Armitage in the title role. Jim does the voiceover as the older Sheldon in the show that’s going into its second season.
He also produced the movie, “A Kid Like Jake,” a drama directed by Silas Howard about a 4-year-old boy (Leo James Davis) whose preference to wear fairy tale princess outfits forces a couple (Jim and Claire Danes) to rethink their roles as parents and spouses.
“The Big Bang Theory” ended Season 11 with a splash when Sheldon and Amy (Mayim Bialik) finally tied the knot, with no less than Mark Hamill as the officiant.
Jim Parsons —Ruben V. Nepales
Excerpts from our chat:
Can you talk about shooting the season finale of “The Big Bang Theory”? Big episodes like that, when you approach them, you just have to take a deep breath because they’re complicated. There are so many people involved. But everybody who was brought in, all the new or old people revisiting, are so good that it made work easy.
It was such a joy. I found participating in the wedding of those two characters more moving than I thought I would. Partly, it’s because it’s an 11-year-old show and I played this guy for 11 years now.
The fact that we’ve been allowed to be on the air for as long as we have, that we could organically develop to a level that happens in a way that isn’t jumping the shark, that’s just the natural progression.
Especially in the season finale this year, we got that feeling of how fortunate we’ve been.
How did the idea of Mark Hamill officiating the wedding of Sheldon and Amy come about? I’m a major “Star Wars” fan. But I don’t know how Mark Hamill came about.
Given how slow the relationship of Sheldon and Amy developed, do you think they will now rush to become parents? My instinct says we will not rush into parenting. As you said, they are slow movers. That being said; one of the joys of working on this show has always been that the writers come up with things that I would’ve never thought of.
But the writers ground them and make them work. So, never say never. Anything’s possible. I can have a baby within a week.
There’s talk that the 12th Season will be the last. Can you talk about where you see the show going? It sounds strange to say it for a group that’s so close and has worked together so long now. But it simply has not been talked about in a wide way yet.
Everyone understands that you don’t do something like this and not suffer a mourning period about it. Even if you decide that it’s the right move, it’s going to be hard to say that final goodbye.
So there’s just no prepping for it even if you’re like, yes, it’s time to move on. I recommend everyone get a good therapist ready.
What about “Young Sheldon”? What can we expect? They just revealed on “Young Sheldon” through a voiceover that he has children. I have every intention of not letting that happen on our prime time show (laughs). That’s something left to the imagination, as far as I’m concerned.
Iain Armitage was precocious in a good way in our interview with him. Were you anything like Iain when you were his age? Oh my God, no. What’s funny is when we do interviews together, and we do them all the time, I’m always like, “I wasn’t as smart and skilled as Iain is. He’s like, “Oh, sure you were!” I’m like, “You are 9. You have no idea what I was like at 9. I’m saying this as a compliment.”
What about Leo James Davis, who plays your son in “A Kid Like Jake”? He had to embody things beyond his capability to understand. The only thing beyond, not his capability, but his experience was, he hadn’t done a lot of acting.
Leo James Davis, Jim Parsons and Claire Danes in “A Kid Like Jake”
But he’s very similar to this character (Jake) in some ways in that he likes to dress in the princess clothes. He likes to get his nails done. He likes to have a barrette on his hair—things like that. He was so charming and lovely in the audition.
The director was the one who was key on this, which was smart. Because the director is the one who has to work with him through it. Both Claire and I have certain interactions with him. Claire had more than I did.
After Leo auditioned, Silas, the director, went and met with Leo and his parents at their home to get a feel of what it’s like to be with him.
Now that it’s all finished, it’s hard to separate and understand what Leo’s own personal experience did bring to this role that another child wouldn’t and couldn’t.
We weren’t telling his exact story, but we were telling a “cousin” to it and therefore he had fun, which is probably the biggest hurdle you have when working with a child.
How much did you love playing a father? Is being a Dad in real life one of your dreams? No. My parenting skills will reside with dogs as far as that will go. That’s as much as I want to be in charge of another life.
Your dogs are lucky. I hope they are. But it was a joy in many levels to play a parent in this movie. One of them was that you discover things about yourself, whether you want to have offspring or not.
As a human being, you have certain instincts that kick in when there’s a young person that you’re in charge of.
But that was fun. It’s not something I think I will experience in my own life.
Did you know that you wanted to become a performer when you were as young as Leo? I did. I knew that I wanted to be an actor from a very early age. I tried to veer off it a couple of times. I tried to think that maybe I’ll be a teacher, then at some point, I wanted to be a meteorologist. I thought, and still do think, that weather is interesting. Mostly, I just wanted to be on TV, talking about the weather (laughs).
But no, it was really acting that I wanted to do.