Jim Parsons Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Big Bang Theory' to 'Young Sheldon'

If I knew everything then that I know now

about what goes into putting something together,

I would have been like,

This is insane.

I'm gonna go back and get my business degree,

or do something that sane person would do.

The odds are just not there.

But don't believe that young people,

that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying the opposite actually.

Forget all that.

If you feel it, you go for it.

This is Jim Parsons, and this is the timeline of my career.

[upbeat instrumental music]

I got into acting through school.

I was in a school district that did plays every year.

I caught the bug and then I did that acting

first grade through 12th grade.

And then I thought this is a really stupid career idea

and way too risky and I tried to give it up.

And I took about a year off my first year in college.

And I was around people who were actually in the theater

and watching them just warm up for performances

or learn monologues for auditions or whatever,

I just knew how badly I missed it.

And there was this kind of aha moment I had

where I realized that if I didn't get back into it,

I saw a really sad older man on my part who was angry.

And so my fear of being a bitter old man

is what led me into the college theater.

And it was my boyfriend actually, now husband, Todd,

who was like, We need to go to L.A.

One thing led to another,

and then I lived in L.A. for 12 years.

And now I'm back in New York.

[upbeat instrumental music]

You familiar with Mount Precipice?

Um, actually I haven't been up here in years.

Well, as you probably know, it's a volcano.

But don't worry, it's not active.

[Carol laughing]

During the turn of the century,

it was primarily used for bauxite mining.

Now, of course, it's a state park.

There have been weddings up here in the past.

Not many though.

Ed was a very small part

where I was a park ranger or something

and the characters played by Julie Bowen and John Slattery

we're looking for a place to get married.

And I was there to show them, and discourage them.

Not on purpose though.

It's something I bring to the party as an actor

is the person who unknowingly gives you bad information.

Like I don't know that what I'm saying is turning you off,

but sure enough, I don't think they got married there.

And I was really excited and I remember watching it,

and it was just neat.

I was, I don't know.

It was really...

One of the best things that happened

was Julie and John, however.

Especially having been on a show for so long now,

I realize how kind and inclusive they were to me

when I was on the set that day.

I spent a lot of time in Julie's trailer,

which I just don't know that I would do that

to somebody playing this one scene of a part in a show

that I'm on every day and I'm here and I'm doing my work

and I'd be pleasant and nice,

but I don't know if I would invite them in, but she did.

She was so nice.

Or maybe if I met me on set,

I'd invite me right in the trailer.

I don't know.

Spend all day with me. [chuckles]

You might want to bring up some sort of portable flooring

if you're planning to down or whatnot.

So Tim, how long have you been working

at Medieval Times?

Three years, but I've only been a knight for two.

You have to pay your dues.

I worked in the stables and helped in the kitchen.

Garden State was really big for me

in kind of a deceptive way.

It was one of those movies that it got a lot of attention

out in the world.

It did very well,

but my character wasn't necessarily big enough

that it didn't make a huge impact for me in that way.

What it did though was, everywhere I went in Hollywood,

they had seen it, like every casting office had seen it.

Or if they hadn't, they'd been hearing people talk about it.

And so it was this first thing that was like a calling card.

It was this first thing I had

when I walked into a room going I'm already here.

I'm already part of the party, right?

Which is really helpful, even just for your confidence,

to feel like, oh I work, and now you know.

And it was just an excellent part too.

I loved playing that and I loved Zach's sensibility,

and I had grown up adoring Jean Smart,

who I got to play the lover of.

I'm really grateful that I wasn't thrust into a sex scene

with Jean Smart though, like my first movie out of the gate.

I would have crumbled.

That might've been too much.

But you know what?

I smoked back then.

So maybe I was cooler and I coulda handled it.

I don't know.

I should get going.

[armor creaking]

[audience laughing]

There's some poor woman who's going to pin her hopes

on my sperm.

What if she winds up with a toddler who doesn't know

if he should use an integral or a differential

to solve for the area under a curve?

[audience laughing]

I'm sure she'll still love him.

I wouldn't.

[audience laughing]

The only thing I remember is that when I read it,

I remember thinking this is important.

It's important that I...

I mean I always work on my auditions, but I don't know.

I felt something special.

And I remember the Oscars were gonna be on that night

and I was invited to like a party and I said I'm not going.

And I stayed home and read out my lines

and worked on my lines.

And then I went in and I auditioned,

and I knew it had gone well.

A few days later they called me back to do the test

for like the network and the studio, or whatever.

And I thought that had gone well.

I knew it had gone well.

I did what I wanted to do and I could tell it had gone well.

But normally any other pilots I have been cast in,

my phone had rang literally while I was walking to the car

from the audition.

Like they just...

This was hours.

It was hours.

And my agent at the time I remember calling and he said,

What happened today?

Ans I said, Oh God, what do you mean?

He goes, I'm just kidding.

You got it.

I was like [laughs].

So then I had the role, and then we started the show.

It was interesting watching the writers do things

like make Sheldon from Texas,

which obviously was to fit in with me and the way I sounded.

But at the same time,

I never purposefully tried that mold that character,

if that makes sense.

I always felt from the moment of the audition

up until the end of the run

that I was at the service of the writers.

That doesn't mean I was an angel to work with

all the time or something,

but that was my take on it.

But like I say, I know that I had an effect on him

and him on me.

I mean I don't know any more about science

and I'm still not into graphic novels

and I don't watch Star Trek.

And there's nothing wrong with any of those things.

I mean, you know, God bless science and graphic novels

and Star Trek, but it's just not my thing.

But playing the role certainly changed my life

and my career.

I mean really is the reason we're talking today.

I mean like without that, so many other things don't happen.

We won the Nobel Prize.

[group screaming]

Oh oh, sorry.

Who am I?

Oops.

I am Oh.

I has been given this name by my many, many friends.

Good morning.

Oh.

Hi, guys. Oh.

Home was not my first voiceover animation stint.

I had done episodes of other animated television shows,

like guest characters or whatever,

but this was definitely the first and most intensive

movie experience I had had.

It was really amazing working on that

because there's a playfulness about voiceover work.

I mean I would never get as sweaty as I get

doing voiceover work doing anything else.

I mean if I did people wouldn't watch me.

They'd be like, Ugh, that looks like a lot of effort.

And the voiceover is oddly, for all the times you hear,

Well, you can wear whatever you want and no makeup.

Well, all that's true but thank God because,

for me at least, it is the most athletic, effortful.

It's just some of the weird things they ask you to do.

Like they have what's called efforts.

Like you'll do 20 minutes of efforts.

Like we need you running through a forest. [panting]

And by the time you've done that for a while,

jump over, oh there's a hill.

Oh well, you know.

I was sweaty.

I lost weight doing Home.

But it was unlike anything I've done before

in the way of truly, without trying to,

forming a character together with not only the writers,

but especially the animators.

And the combination of getting me recorded for something

and then doing sketch drawings,

which they would show me of what that face would look like

on a creature mimic to my voice,

and then redoing certain things,

or me getting information from what I saw and going

Oh, I don't know if I want that to be that, and whatever.

It was just really intensive.

And it took a long time.

I feel like it was a year and a half or two years,

like on and off.

I'd come in and work for like three hours.

And then I wouldn't be back for three weeks.

And I'd come in and work for a few hours.

And the only thing that, I won't say I don't like about it,

but you're not with other actors.

And that's a big part of what I do love about this career.

We had some stage sessions for promo stuff,

like where me and Rihanna and Steve Martin

were all in the booth at the same time.

But I don't imagine they used any of that.

I mean for one thing, I was dressed too nicely for that.

I was like, I don't wear this to record.

She's got a full face of makeup on.

No, I don't know.

But you know.

I am very excitement to make a new, fresh start.

[upbeat instrumental music]

Shelley, dinner's ready.

♪ What I say ♪

[Sheldon] [laughs] I don't care how dimwitted you are,

scientific principles have to make you smile.

Of course nobody I knew in East Texas in 1989

cared about Newtonian physics.

So in the process of working a long time on a TV show,

sometimes you get these beautiful perks,

like the studio, in my case Warner Brothers,

when they renegotiate your contracts,

you suddenly get the offer to have a production company,

or maybe we ask for it and they go, Sure.

It wasn't unheard of is my point.

And I remember my executive who runs my company

really with my husband.

I'm really an in-front of the camera cat, as it were.

I don't really crawl much well and don't do well behind it.

Anyway, they run the company.

And so Todd and I began talking about how much we would love

to base a show around maybe my family,

but specifically my nephew who is so intelligent

and just so charmingly different than everybody else.

And he's just great.

He's just so goddamn smart.

So we're starting to put together this show idea

and Todd and I were like,

I mean it sounds like a young Sheldon.

And at one point were like you know what,

what you have to do is,

what I had to do was write Chuck Lorre and be like,

Here's a show idea that we had.

It's sounding a lot like Sheldon.

We are fine with steering away from that

and making it its own thing.

But as long as this has come up,

do you have any interest in doing,

which I hate to use this term but I did at the time,

I was like, Spinoff.

I don't like spinoffs, usually.

I think one of the few that work was Lou Grant

from Mary Tyler Moore and they turned that into a drama.

So I was like, I am not saying this is a good idea,

but I wanna run it by you.

He wrote back and was like, This is very interesting.

Let me talk to Steve Molaro, another executive producer.

He was such an important writer on the show.

And they were like, I think we should do it.

And it was so great to hear them talk about it

suddenly through smart eyes,

with things like running shows because they were like,

We already have a treasure trove of backstories

and things we've referred to that inform

God knows how many stories for a young version.

And that was the beginning of Young Sheldon.

I was shocked when they said it would be a single camera.

I thought why not multi-camera?

It could be a raging success.

I could drop by every once in a while

and say hi to the audience.

No, nobody wanted that.

[Sheldon] In that moment, I had an epiphany.

I could draw up a contract for any social relationship.

[dishes clinging]

He kept dancing around what had happened,

talking about Jake's creative role play or whatever,

and then suddenly I realized, oh God,

this guy doesn't know how to tell me that my son was,

well he was the little mermaid it turns out.

Jake came to us because the producing team,

they're called Double Nickel,

they had brought it to my attention

as something that I might wanna act in

that they might wanna produce, et cetera, et cetera.

But that never happened.

But I read it and I never forgot it.

And so once time had gone by, I wanted to revisit it.

It was a play with only three characters.

In the play, the child is not part of it,

and obviously the world is not opened up

so there's no other people.

It was just the two parents

and his teacher slash instructor at the school.

And I thought, this seems like a manageable thing for us

to take on as a company

to like get our feet wet with a movie.

This seems like the right size to do it.

I also really thought the way the father spoke

and the way he dealt with things,

the way other characters talked about him,

I thought it was a decent fit for me.

So I felt I wanted to play that part.

And I just thought the whole thing was artfully done.

Daniel Pearle, who wrote it,

I thought he just did such an artful job.

I just really liked the tone of the piece

as much as anything.

And I know that that had some effect on me,

like the social point, if you will, of this,

but it wasn't the reason I wanted to do it.

It was just it was kind of an added bonus that it had.

I mean it helped with the tone.

It gave it its weight, in my opinion.

It gave it a gravity.

I don't like to use the word important

'cause I don't wanna ever take something out to the world

and go this is important.

You should...

No, no, no, no, that's between you and your God.

But it didn't seem frothy to me.

It didn't seem, you know, it seemed like worth the effort.

And I knew that it was going to be a lot of effort even

well, partially because of a smaller budget,

but even with a smaller group of people,

it's a lot of work to get these things off the ground.

So you better really like it.

And I did.

I mean he does like to play dress up.

That's not news.

Not that I care obviously,

but he's on exactly Johnny Basketball.

[Reporters] Mr. Simpson, Mr. Simpson.

Do you have any comments on the trial?

Let me say this.

This man is a threat to society.

He has made a mockery of our justice system.

That may have worked on the other side of the Rockies,

but as lead prosecutor for the great state of Florida,

I have every intention of showing him

how we do things in the Sunshine State.

In all honesty, the biggest reason I wanted to do

Extremely Wicked was because as soon as I heard

that Zac Efron was playing Ted Bundy, I thought,

yeah, I'm completely on board for that.

I thought not only do I think that works,

but I think it's exactly the kinda thing that excites me,

which is watching another actor,

another artist if you will,

do something that is both out of left field

and makes sense at the same time.

And for me, him playing Ted Bundy,

it hit that right on the head.

It was just like what?

And as soon as I thought about I was like, yeah, totally.

Nevermind he kind of looks like him a little bit.

And so that was really the biggest thing I thought

I want to be a part of that project.

I think I also knew Malkovich was playing the judge,

and I didn't know if I would have any scenes with Malkovich

when I first heard about it,

but I thought if Malkovich is a part of the project.

You know, and then the whole experience was just

even more rich than I thought it would be.

The exciting thing about playing a real person,

or a character based on a real person

who's discussing real events,

is that it, to me at least, it gives it such

an extra amount of weight that needs not your invention.

You don't have to bring that to it.

All you have to do is accept it as the truth that it is.

And that was extremely rewarding for me

to get to go through those court scenes,

like the longer portions describing what he had done

and describing what a vile human being he was

for having done them.

I don't know.

I don't know how to say it.

It just it felt good to get to say it. [laughs]

The more gruesome details about the Bundy case

are harrowing to read

and I wouldn't read it for enjoyment's sake.

That being said, because I did play a character

who was so anti that, who was trying to convict him.

I don't know how else to say,

but I felt pretty cleansed by the end of it.

I was like, I've done everything I can.

If you won't throw him behind bars,

well, at least I try, you know.

I think that kind of...

I felt very clean when I was done with it.

I can't speak for Zac though.

Ladies and gentlemen, this case is so much more

than a double murder.

Don't let his opening statement phase you.

[Larry] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury-

Show no emotion at all. This case

is about catching a monster.

[dramatic instrumental music]

You know what my talent is?

I know in the first 30 seconds

if somebody who's got what it takes to be a star,

and you, believe it or not, you got it.

You got picture potential.

Hollywood came about, well from the mind of Ryan Murphy

and he came to me while we were shooting

Boys in the Band actually 'cause he's a producer on that,

knocked on my trailer one day

and started talking about this project and this character.

I remember going home and talking to Todd about it,

and he was like, Well, you're gonna do it.

You love working with Ryan.

I was like, Oh yeah, you're right.

I'm going to do it.

And this is before I'd even read it.

But the part of Henry Willson excited me tremendously.

To play this kind of vile, blustering at times,

dealing with the mafia.

I was just like, What in the hell?

It was everything about acting,

or a lot of things about acting,

that I think most actors love, which is like you get to play

these outlandish scenes, comedy, drama,

cringe-worthy things.

But again, it was a real person

and so I had the not only the responsibility,

but I had with the material of his life,

the knowledge of how to ground him and make him real.

Or I felt that I did.

And keeping those two things going at the same time,

this vile, could be a caricature,

but trying to keep him as real as possible.

It was really the perfect challenge.

And I loved every second of it.

Even the hours in the makeup chair.

I think the question of what does Ryan see in me as an actor

is something that a lot of actors probably,

at different levels, ask themselves or wonder,

even if not quite in those words or quite consciously.

But it's always, for me at least,

and I think a lot of people, it's always a positive

and it's always very freeing

and it's always a confidence booster.

He has this almost magical way of seeing aspects

that you could bring to something

that not only nobody else sees,

but you yourself sometimes don't.

And so I knew that and I felt that,

and I felt that as soon as I started reading it,

Even as vile and horrible as it was,

because Ryan had said that I could play this part,

I believe that I could.

And that was really all the invitation I needed

to jump on board with both feet.

You're fired.

[dramatic instrumental music]

Let's go.

[dramatic instrumental music]

[Photographer] Can I get a picture?

[crowd chattering]

[Reporter] Show me that smile?

[Journalist] Hey Henry, let's get a pose.

Right over here. Mr. Willson.

[dramatic instrumental music]

This old college friend of mine is in town

and he's stopping by for a fast drink

on his way to dinner somewhere.

But he's straight, so.

Straight.

If he's the one I met he's about as straight

as the yellow brick road.

No, you met Justin Stewart.

It is not that I care what he would think of me really.

It's just, he's not ready for it.

And he never will be.

The Boys in the Band was a unique

and possibly a once in a career experience

for a couple of reasons.

The first was that it was so many, [laughs]

so many gay men all involved.

I mean the director, the producer, the writer,

every single actor in it.

And when I first knew that the whole cast

was going to be out gay actors, I thought that's great.

I will say just at a personal level,

the experience when we did the play on Broadway

was unlike anything I'd ever been a part of before,

partly because of the fact

that it was just a group of gay guys together

working on this piece.

And I didn't realize that was something I had missed out on.

And that people miss out on, because again,

the rarity of having that situation is

it's rare for everybody, not just me.

But it was very impactful to me,

and it was a very familial, fraternal language being spoken

that I didn't realize I could speak

or that so many other people spoke.

And I don't even know how to define that,

but it was unique in that way.

The second part that was,

I don't know that I'll ever repeat this in my career,

was having done a full Broadway run of material

before you get in front of the camera with it.

Well, normally you barely get to rehearse anything

in front of the camera.

Even if they set aside time for rehearsal,

it's still much more limited than in a theater situation.

Matt Bomer was the one who said at one point during it

in middle of filming, he was like,

Okay, I've decided I never wanna do any movie

that I haven't done a full Broadway run off beforehand.

And I thought it's so true

because there were so many questions

that didn't need to be asked,

which allowed for so many other questions

that you wouldn't of gotten to to be asked in the process.

And just this understanding of the material

and having lived with these characters for so long,

if you were willing to play, which I think all of us were,

you just cut to travel to deeper and more substantial places

than I think I had ever been to before on a movie set.

Like I say, it may have been

a once in a career type experience.

I hope not, but by the same token, I enjoyed it so much

that I don't mind if it's the only one like that

because it's very special to me.

And so maybe I don't want another one like that.

I'll have to find something else wonderful.

I think what excites me most is, you know,

God willing for a long life on my part,

but that I'm in for surprises still.

I feel like I'm in a place in my career

that feels young again, in a weird way,

if that makes any sense.

Like, all I can do is keep moving along

and keep trying and doing the things

that my heart is called to do.

And so that excites me.

It feels like a low-key Christmas morning.

If I told my younger self that I would be doing

a career retrospective,

he would not have known what to make of that

because what career?

And what are you talking about?

And the idea that all add up and do things

that somebody will like care to go over,

besides my mother, that would have surprised me.