How Jim Parsons Really Felt About Iain Armitage's Young Sheldon Audition

Iain Armitage had huge (well, technically child-sized) shoes to fill when he became Young Sheldon. As the original Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory — the deeply nerdy physicist with a snippy comeback for every moment — Jim Parsons made millions of fans cry-laugh. By 2019, when the mega-popular sitcom wrapped, Sheldon had become a fixture of TV, and he's now a part of pop culture history. Parsons even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And while we were chuckling at home, the actor was chuckling himself to the bank. According to reports, per Entertainment Tonight, the core cast — which included Parsons, Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg — earned nearly $1 million per episode during season 12. 

Insanely enough, that payoff could have been bigger if Parsons hadn't been ready to say goodbye. Entertainment Weekly reported that had Parsons not been "ready to leave" Sheldon behind and if he had agreed to two more seasons, both he and the other original four cast members could've added "$50 million, including profits," to their bank accounts. But hey, no actor wants to get pigeon-holed. 

And if anyone was a good fit to play Young Sheldon, it's the talented Iain Armitage. The young star crushed his debut TV role as Ziggy Chapman on HBO's Big Little Lies months before landing the spinoff gig. But did the rising star crush his audition for Young Sheldon? Scroll down to find out what Jim Parsons first thought of Iain Armitage. 

So, how was Iain Armitage's audition as Young Sheldon? Not everyone nails every audition, and sometimes it's more important that the casting folks see something in an actor. Well, it seems that wasn't a problem for this youngster. Producers Chuck Lorre, Steven Molaro and Jim Parsons were blown away by Armitage's audition tape. 

"His mother taped him at his grandmother's house over Christmas," Parsons told Entertainment Tonight in August 2017. "Chuck and Steve wrote this ridiculously long, complicated monologue," which Armitage apparently nailed. "[Steven] and I sent the video to Jim," Lorre explained (via the New York Post). "And we went, 'I think we just got extremely lucky.'" Parsons told Entertainment Tonight that they saw "so many tapes" that "were all good in different ways," but "Iain's was mind-blowing in some ways." He continued, "it's true. There was a naturalness with it and a spirit with it, and an understanding of what..."

But then, during the interview, Armitage interrupted Parsons to say: "Now you're just being kind." To which Parsons insisted, "I am not kind. I'm a nice person, but I'm not kind when it comes to those things. I would just not say anything if I didn't like it." Meanwhile, the "Sheldons" are cut from the same cloth as stage actors. Parsons has a rock-solid Broadway resume, and Armitage is a theater fanatic who interviewed theater bigwigs as a pint-sized critic! No wonder Jim Parsons saw something in him.