For Montana Jordan and Emily Osment, the news that “Young Sheldon” would be coming to an end was cushioned as they learned just minutes later that they would be leading their own spinoff series for CBS.
“We had just had a big Zoom call with the whole cast where the producers let us know that it was gonna it was gonna be our final season,” Osment told TheWrap. “15 minutes later, my phone rang and it was Chuck [Lorre] saying, ‘hey, we’re gonna keep this going, but not everyone is coming along.’”
“Five minutes after I figured out ‘Young Sheldon’ was ending, they called me and told me they wanted to do this,” Jordan added.
With the new series, which was eventually titled “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” in the back of their heads, shooting the seventh and final season of “Young Sheldon” was “bittersweet,” with Osment recalling, “we had to shoot season seven, knowing that not everyone was going to be a part of it, and it was really tough … it was difficult sometimes to manage that.”
“It was a tough road to walk … It was a lot of me in Montana in little corners on stage jumping up and down and hugging and then going back to work,” Osment continued, while Jordan added, “we didn’t want to take anything away from ‘Young Sheldon’ just because we’re starting this new thing.”
“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” picks up just months after the “Young Sheldon” series finale, with a newly married Georgie and Mandy packing their bags to live with Mandy’s parents (played by Rachel Bay Jones and Will Sasso) as they raise their baby.
After the sudden death of Georgie’s dad, George Sr. (Lance Barber), in the final season of “Young Sheldon,” Jordan said audiences “started seeing [Georgie] grow up a little bit [and] become the man of the household,” which lays a solid groundwork as Georgie steps up as Mandy’s husband and the father of their child. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some rough patches along the way, however, with Jordan teasing “there’s gonna be a lot of head-butting” between the young couple and Mandy’s parents.
“It’s a lot of things coalescing at once — him becoming a father and him losing his own father and managing living in a new place — and it’s going to ask a lot of him and it’s going to show his real character, and Mandy is going to be right there with him supporting him,” Osment said. “I love seeing the transition from little boy Season 1 of ‘Young Sheldon’ to this family man that we’ve seen now and in Montana growing up right next to this character — It’s a really beautiful thing.”
After briefly meeting Mandy’s parents on “Young Sheldon,” Osment expressed her excitement to see “more of where she comes from,” including meeting her brother, Connor (Dougie Baldwin). “I’m excited for whatever job or career path she takes, whether she’s decides to go back to school,” Osment said. “I’m looking forward to whatever work life balance they throw at Mandy and how she deals with it, hopefully.”
After “The Big Bang Theory” established years ago that Georgie and Mandy had gotten divorced, creators Chuck Lorre, Steve Holland and Steven Molaro cleverly titled the spinoff series, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” and have refused to pigeonhole themselves into the universe’s canon, with Holland telling TheWrap “We don’t know that their second marriage isn’t to each other.”
“People do that all the time!” Osment said. “I think it’s right there in the title.”
Osment noted the team has not discussed how Georgie and Mandy would potentially find their way back together, but she noted she doesn’t “need to know.” “I put my full faith and trust in them and wherever that path leads me, I know, it’ll be good,” Osment said, adding her gratitude that series creator Lorre has kept her employed for 14 years. “Every time I meet with him or there’s a new show … There’s always this response of ‘well, we don’t know where it’s going, you just need to trust us’ and I do completely trust whatever they write.”
“[Audiences have] already seen all of all of the cracks — they got married really young. She got pregnant really early, and they both lied about their age,” Osment said. “I don’t know how much more any pot says that. The whatever episode it was season seven where we eventually get married, where she says you started your marriage with lies and deceit. It’s only up from here and I think that’s completely true.
After “Young Sheldon” differentiated its from “The Big Bang Theory” by moving to single-cam, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” is moving back to multicam, which is a familiar space for Osment and a new arena for Jordan.
“I love the atmosphere that we’re all together every day — with single cam sometimes it’s like ships in the night; I would go like two weeks ago without seeing Zoe Perry because we just didn’t have a scene together,” Osment said. “On a multicam you are together every day at 9 a.m. whether your involvement in the episode is large or small, you are on stage ready to go. It’s such a theater environment; it’s such a family.”
“It is way different,” Jordan said of shooting multicam. “I didn’t know anything when thing going into ‘Young Sheldon,’ hell, I didn’t know what I was doing … I’m gonna give it my all because they believed in all four of us main characters to create this show that they had this vision for, so I’m gonna do my best not to let them down.”
“Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” premieres Thursdays at 8 p.m. PST on CBS, and streams on Paramount+.
