Anyone who thought Lance Barber’s run as George Cooper, Sr. was going to be cut short on Young Sheldon, given how the character’s fate had been referenced on The Big Bang Theory, learned otherwise. Not only did Barber play the Cooper patriarch until the series end, he’s now set to reprise his role as Georgie’s dad in an upcoming episode of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, the Young Sheldon spinoff.
Producers from the show confirmed the news of Barber’s guest spot at a press conference this week on the set of Georgie & Mandy. The character will appear to his namesake son not via streaming DVD VHS (ask your parents, kids!) but rather in a dream. The idea was inspired by the fact that series creator/executive producer Chuck Lorre has been visited by his own late father in a dream.
TV Insider was on the scene and, following the Q&A panel, chatted up executive producer Steve Holland about Barber’s return, who else from Young Sheldon might appear again and/or next on Georgie & Mandy, and why established lore from Big Bang doesn’t tie creative hands as much as one might think!
I was at the original kickoff press panel for Young Sheldon, and I thought, “Oh, poor Lance! He’s not going to have a job for very long.” What do I know! In many ways, the story door is wide open for these types of returns.
Steve Holland: Yes, I think it’s super wide open for us on this show. On Young Sheldon, the future for Sheldon [Iain Armitage] was written. Here, the future is mostly unwritten except for Georgie [Montana Jordan] a little bit. But everyone else’s is unwritten. We also have a great way to keep telling the story of those characters from Young Sheldon. It’s a great way to keep bringing back Annie Potts [Connie AKA Meemaw] and Zoe Perry [Mary] and see how characters change, especially Mary from being the Mary of Young Sheldon into the Mary [Laurie Metcalf] we see on Big Bang.
One of the big takeaways from Young Sheldon was that memory’s a funny thing. The George Sr. that Sheldon (Jim Parsons) had in his mind wasn’t really who he was. Can you talk about the relationship between Georgie and his father-in-law Jim (Will Sasso)?
Georgie’s father-in-law and George Sr. have similarities. We’ve seen Georgie embrace his father-in-law more like a father. We’ve explored him dealing with the loss of his father and how he carries a little bit of guilt over that. We wanted to show how he’s dealing with that loss. [Georgie] had that sweet moment where he hugged [Jim] and said, “You remind me of my dad.” There are some interesting complications to explore.
While Georgie and Mandy (Emily Osment) may have future marriages, it doesn’t mean that they don’t end up together.
[Smiling] It does not mean that. Absolutely. You’re right.
There’s really a lot of freedom with story directions despite historical references that have been made about characters on Big Bang.
Yes. There’s some lore. Even on Young Sheldon we had fun ways of acknowledging that lore but we also found a way to show that it happened in an unexpected way.
Are there other character returns you’d like to explore in upcoming episodes?
We’ve had Craig T. Nelson [on as Frank]. It’s been great fun to bring on the rest of the [Young Sheldon] family. I love all those actors.
June Squibb (Thelma) once played Meemaw on Big Bang. Might we see her again?
I don’t know that we’ll do “flash-forwards” as much [as flashbacks]. Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage is definitely a spin-off and lives in this world. We are hoping to carve out its own little territory of this work. It’s a different show than Big Bang. The show is more akin to Young Sheldon.
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, Thursdays, 8/7c, CBS
