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

If I had known everything I know now about what goes into putting something together, I would have thought this is crazy, I'm going to go back and get my business degree or do something a sane person would do, the odds are just not there, but no believe

young

people that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying the opposite, you actually forget all that, if you feel it, you try, this is jim

parsons

and this is the timeline of my

career

that I have. in acting in school I was in a school district that did plays every year, I caught it and then I did that acting thing from first grade to 12th grade and then I thought, uh, this is a really stupid

career

idea and Too risky and I tried to do it.

I quit and took about a year off my freshman year of college and was around people who were actually in theater and seeing them just warming up for performances or learning monologues for auditions or whatever, I knew how much that I missed him and There was kind of an aha moment I had where I realized that if I didn't get back to it, I would see a very sad old man on my side who was angry and that's why my fear of being a bitter old man is which led me to The College Theater and it was actually my boyfriend, now husband Todd, who was saying we had to go to Los Angeles.

One thing led to another and then I lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and now I'm back in New York, are you familiar with Mount Precipice? In fact, I haven't been here in years, as you probably know it's a volcano, but don't worry, it's not active during the turn of the century. It was mainly used for the extraction of bauxite. Now, of course, it's a state park. There have been weddings. Here in the past there weren't many, although Ed was a very small role where I was a gamekeeper or something and the characters played by Julie Bowen and John Slattery were looking for a place to get married and I was there to show them and talk them out of it.

No, not on purpose, although it is something that I bring to the party as an actor, as the person who, without knowing it, gives you bad information, like I don't know if what I'm saying discourages you, but actually, I don't think they have. understood. I got married there and I was so excited and I remember seeing it and it was great. I don't know if it was real. One of the best things that happened was Julie and John, though, especially after being on a show for so long. I realize how kind and inclusive they were with me when I was on set that day.

I spent a lot of time in Julie's trailer, but I don't know if she would do that to someone playing this scene for a role on a show. the one where I'm every day and I'm here and I'm doing my job and it would be nice and kind but I don't know if I would invite them in but she did, she was very kind or maybe if I met me on set. She would invite me right into the trailer. I don't know, she spends the whole day with me. You might want to bring some type of portable floor if you plan on dancing or whatever.

So, Tim, how long have you been around? working in medieval times three years but I've only been one night for two you have to pay your dues I worked in the stables and helped in the orchard the state was really big for me in a deceptive way it was one of those The movies that caught the attention a lot attention in the world they did very well, but my character wasn't necessarily big enough to not have a big impact on me in that way, what it did was everywhere I went in Hollywood. I had seen it like all the casting offices had seen it or, if they hadn't, they had heard people talking about it, so it was the first thing that was like a calling card, it was the first thing I had when I walked up. walking into a room, I'm already here, I'm already part of the party, right, uh, which is really helpful, even just to make you feel your confidence, oh, I work now and now, you know, and it was a great part too , I loved.

I played that and I loved Zach's sensitivity and I grew up adoring Gene Smart, whose lover I got to play. I'm very grateful that I wasn't thrust into a sex scene with Gene Smart, even though it was like my first movie. that would have collapsed that would have been that might have been too much but you know what I smoked back then so maybe I was fresher I could have handled it I don't know should I go there's some poor woman who's going to pin her hopes on my sperm, right? What if she ends up with a little boy who doesn't know whether to use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve?

I'm sure she will still love him. It wouldn't be the only thing that What I remember is that when I read it I remember thinking this is this is important this is important I mean I always work on my auditions but I don't know I felt something special and I remember that the Oscars were going to be that night I was They invited me to a party and I said I wasn't going and I stayed home and wrote my lines and worked on my lines and then I went in and auditioned and I knew it went well a few days later they called me back. do the test for the network and at the end the study or whatever and I thought it had gone well, I knew it had gone well, I did what I wanted to do and I realized that it had gone well, but normally any other pilot would have been cast on my phone had literally rang as I was walking to the car from the audition like it was hours, it was hours and my agent at the time I remember calling and saying what happened today and I was like, oh God, what are you doing? you mean he says, I'm just kidding, you got it, so I got the part and then we started the show.

It was interesting to see the writers do things like make Sheldon from Texas, which was obviously to fit me and the form. I dreamed, but at the same time I never purposely tried to shape that character, if that makes sense. I always felt, from the moment of the audition until the end of the race, that I was at the service of the writers. I mean, he was an angel to work with all the time or something, but that was my opinion, but like I say, I know I had an effect on him and he on me, I mean, no, I don't know about science anymore and I still don't.

I like graphic novels and I don't watch Star Trek and there's nothing wrong with that. Those things I mean, you know, God bless science and graphic novels and Star Trek, but he's just not my. but playing the role certainly changed my life and my career, I mean, it's really the reason we're talking today, I mean, without that, a lot of other things don't happen, who I am, oh, a lot of my many have given me this name. many friends, good morning home was not my first season of voiceover animation. I had done episodes of other animated TV shows as guest characters or whatever, but this was definitely the first and most intensive film experience I had.

It was really amazing to work on that because there's a joy about voiceover work, I mean, I would never sweat as much as when I do voiceover work doing anything else, I mean, if I did, people wouldn't look at me, they'd be like, oh, that seems like a lot of effort and the voiceover is Funnily enough, every time you say, well, you can wear whatever you want, without makeup, yeah, well, that's true, but thank God, because for me at least it's the most athletic effort, are just some of the weird things you're asked to do. do what's called efforts, like you do 20 minutes of effort, it's like we need you running through a force and when you've done it for a while, jump up there, there's a hill, oh well you know what You are me.

I was sweating, I lost weight doing things at home, but it wasn't like anything I'd done before in the sense of not really trying to form a character along with not only the writers but especially the animators and the combination of filming myself for something and then. Making sketches that would show me what that face would look like on the creature imitated with my voice and then redoing certain things or getting information from what I saw. Oh, I don't know if I want it to be that or whatever. It was really intensive and took a lot of time.

I feel like it was a year and a half or two years on and off. I would come in and work for like three hours and then I wouldn't come back for three weeks and I would come in and work for a few hours and the only thing I won't say is that I don't like it, but you're not with other actors and that's a big part of what I love about this career. I had a few sessions on stage for promotional stuff like where me, Rihanna and Steve Martin were all in the booth at the same time, but I don't think they used any of that.

I mean, she was too well dressed for that to begin with. I don't use this to record, she has a face full of makeup. No, I don't know, but you know, I'm really excited to start again. I don't care how stupid you are. Scientific principles have to be. make you smile, of course, no one I knew in East Texas in 1989 cared about Newtonian physics, so in the process of working a long time on a television show, sometimes you get these beautiful benefits like studying, in my case, Warner Brothers when they renegotiate your contracts. suddenly I get the offer to have a production company or maybe we asked for it and they make sure it wasn't something unheard of, that's my point and I remember my executive who runs my company really with my husband, I don't have one, I'm really a front of the camera, cat, so to speak, I don't really crawl very well and I don't do well behind me, anyway, they were in the company, so Todd and I started talking about how much we would love to base a show around maybe my family, but specifically my nephew, who is so smart and so charmingly different from everyone else and he's just great, he's so fucking smart, so we're starting to put together this show idea and Todd and I We thought, I mean, it sounds like

young

Sheldon and at one point we thought, you know, what you have to do is what I had to do was write chuck laurie and say, here's an idea for the show that we had, it sounds very Similar to Sheldon, we are fine with the direction. away from that and doing something of your own, but as long as this has come up, do you have any interest in doing it?

I hate to use this term, but I did at the time. It was like a spin-off. I don't like spin-offs. Generally, I think one of the few that worked was Mary Tyler Moore's Lou Grant and they turned it into a drama, so I thought, "No, I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I want to tell you," he wrote. Coming back like that is very interesting, let me talk to Steve Molaro, another executive producer, he was a very important writer on the show and they said, I think we should do it and it was cool to hear them talk about it suddenly through smart eyes with things like putting on shows because they were like we already have a treasure trove of backstories and things that we've referred to that inform God knows how many stories for this young version and that was the beginning of young Sheldon.

I was surprised when I said it would be a single camera I thought, why not multi-camera? It could be a great success. You could also visit everyone and say hello to the audience. No, nobody wanted to. At that moment I had an epiphany. I could write a contract for any social relationship, I kept going back and forth about what had happened talking about Jake's creative role playing or whatever and then all of a sudden I realized, oh god, this guy doesn't know how to tell me that My son was, well, he was the little mermaid. Jake came to us because the production team is called Double Nickel and they had brought it to my attention as something that I might want to act in, that they might want to produce, etc., but that never happened, but I read about it and I never did.

I forgot, so once time passed I wanted to visit it again. It was a play with only three characters. In the play, the boy is not part of it and obviously the world is not open, so there are no other people. just the two parents and their teachers cut the instructor at school and I thought this seems like something manageable for us as a company, to get our feet wet with a movie, this seems like the right size to do it, me too. I thought about the way the father spoke and the way he handled things, the way other characters talked about him.

I thought he was a good fit for me, so I felt like I wanted to play that role and I thought it was all done artistically. Daniel Pearl. who wrote it, I thought he did such a clever job. I really liked the tone of the piece more than anything and I know that had some effect on me, like the social point, so to speak, but it didn't. The reason I wanted to do it was simply because it had some sort of added advantage. I mean, it helped with the tone. It gave him weight. In my opinion, it gave it seriousness.

I don't like to use the word. important because I never want to put something out into the world, see, this is important, you should, no, no, that's between you and your god, um, but, it didn't seem sparkling to me, it didn't seem to me like you knew. It seemed like it was worth the effort and I knew it was going to be a lot of effort, even in part due to 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 I better I like it a lot and I said so.

I meant that he likes to play dress up. That's nothing new. Not that I care, obviously, but it's not exactly Johnny Basketball. Do you have any comments about the trial? Let me say that this man is a threat to thesociety. You've made a mockery of our justice system that may have worked on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, but as the top prosecutor for the great state of Florida, I have every intention of showing you how we do things in the Sunshine State in all honesty. The reason I wanted to do something extremely evil was because as soon as I heard that Zac Efron was playing Ted Bundy I thought yeah, I'm completely fine with that, I thought not only do I think it works, but I think it's exactly the kind of things that excite me: seeing another actor, another artist, if you do something that is out of the ordinary and makes sense at the same time, and for me, he played Ted Bundy.

I hit that right on the head, it was something like that and as soon as I thought about it I thought, yeah, nevermind, he kinda looks like him and that was really the biggest thing I thought I wanted to be a part of. about that project I think I also knew that Malkovich was going to play the judge and I didn't know if I would have any scenes with Malkovich when I first found out, but I thought if Malkovich is part of the project, you know, and then the whole experience was still richer than I thought it would be.

The exciting thing about playing a real person or a character based on a real person who is discussing real events is that for me at least it gives him that extra amount of weight that he needs. It's not your invention, you don't have to bring that to the table, all you have to do is accept it as the truth that it is and that was extremely gratifying for me to be able to go through those court scenes, like the longer parts that describe what I had. . done and describing what a vile human being he was for doing them, I don't know, I don't know how to say it and it just felt good to be able to say it.

The most gruesome details about the Bundy case are heartbreaking. I read it and I wouldn't read it for fun. That being said, because I played a character that was so anti-that that I was trying to condemn it. I do not know how to say it. I felt pretty clean at the end. I thought I had done all I could if you didn't put them behind bars, well at least I tried, you know, I think that kind of thing I felt pretty clean when I was done, I can't speak for Zach, ladies and gentlemen, this case It's much more than a double murder, don't let your opening statement be about catching a monster, you know what my talent is, I know in the first 30 seconds if someone has what it takes to be a star.

And believe it or not, you have it, you have image potential. Hollywood came right out of Ryan Murphy's mind and, um, he came to see me while we were filming the guys in the band, actually because he's the producer of that, one day he called my trailer. and I started talking about this project and this character. I remember going home and talking to Todd about it and he said, well, you're going to do it, you love working with Ryan. I said, oh yeah, you're right, I'm going to do it. and that was before i had even read it, but the role of henry wilson excited me tremendously to play this kind of dastardly swagger that sometimes deals with the mafia. things about acting that I think most actors love, it's like you can play these wacky scenes, dramedy, cringey things, but again, it was a real person, so not only did I have the responsibility, but They also had the material with them. from his life, the knowledge of how to connect it and make it real or feel like I did it and maintain those two things at the same time, this vial could be a caricature, but trying to keep it as real as possible was really perfect. challenge and I loved every second of it, even the hours in the makeup chair.

I think the question of what Ryan sees in me as an actor is something that a lot of actors probably on different levels ask themselves or ask themselves, even if not in those words or quite consciously, but it's always at least for me and I think for a lot of people it's always positive and it's always very liberating and it's always a confidence booster. He has this almost magical way of seeing the aspects you can bring to something you can't. Only no one else sees it, but you yourself sometimes don't see it, so I knew it and I felt it and I felt it as soon as I started reading it, even as vile and horrible as it was because Ryan had said I could play this paper.

I thought I could and that was really all the invitation I needed to jump on board with both feet, you're fired, come on, this old friend of mine from college is in town and coming for a quick drink on his way to dinner somewhere . but he's so straight, if that's who I met, he's as straight as the yellow brick road, no, you met justin stewart, it's not that I care what he thinks of me, really, he's just not ready for it, you know, and him never being the voice in the band was a unique experience and possibly unique in his career for a couple of reasons, the first was that there were so many gay men involved, I mean the director, the producer, to the writer, to each actor in it.

And when I first found out that the entire cast would be made up of gay actors, I thought that was great. I will say that on a personal level, the experience when we did the play on Broadway was like nothing I had ever participated in before. partly due to the fact that it was just a group of gay guys together working on this piece and I didn't realize that it was something that I had missed and that most people miss because, again, the weirdness of having that situation is that It's weird for everyone, not just me, but it was very shocking for me and a very familiar brotherly language was spoken that I didn't realize I could speak or that so many other people spoke and I don't even know how to do it .

Define that, but it was unique in that sense. The second part, which I don't know if I'll ever repeat this in my career, was doing a whole series of Broadway material before getting in front of the camera with it. Well, you can usually barely rehearse anything in front of the camera, even if they set aside time for a rehearsal, it's still much more limited than in a theater situation. Matt Bomer was the one who said it at one point during filming. It was like, "Okay, I've decided that I never want to do any movie that I haven't done before on Broadway and I thought that was so true because there were so many questions that didn't need to be asked, which allowed for a lot of other questions that you wouldn't have been able to ask." in the process and just his understanding of the material after having lived with these characters for so long if you were willing to play, which I think all of us were, we could just travel to deeper, more substantial places than I think I've ever been. before on the set of a movie, like I said, it may have been a once in a lifetime experience, I hope not, but in the same way I enjoyed it so much that I don't.

I care if it's the only one like that because it's very special to me and maybe I don't want another one like that. I'll have to find something more wonderful. I think what excites me most is that God wants me to have a long life. on my part, but some surprises await me, I still feel like I'm in a place of my career feeling young again in a strange way, if that makes any sense, all I can do is keep moving forward and keep going. to try and do the things my heart is called to do and that excites me, it feels like a low key Christmas morning, if I had told my younger self I would be doing a career retrospective I wouldn't have known what to do.

That's because what career and what are you talking about and the idea that I add and do things that some people like to review besides my mother, that would have surprised me.