Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, the spinoff of the recently concluded Young Sheldon, which was a spinoff of The Big Bang Theory, is an opportunity for producers to tell new stories involving Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) and his wife Mandy (Emily Osment), the older brother and sister-in-law of Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage, Jim Parsons) now that his tales have been chronicled.
TV Insider caught up with executive producer/head writer Steve Holland, Jordan, and Osment on the Paramount lot at a press event to kick off the new Fall TV season to preview the CBS sitcom, which will appear both familiar and new to viewers.
“There wasn’t a grand plan behind it,” Holland tells us about why the characters of Georgie and Mandy were chosen to be spun off from Young Sheldon. He says the idea came about after the producers, including series creator Chuck Lorre, watched the two actors and saw their delightful chemistry.
“They were just so much fun to watch,” Holland says. “We were like, ‘We want to watch these characters more.’ It was born out of that.”
While this is Jordan’s second series for Lorre, Osment has done quite a few for the genius hitmaker. Her first job with him was when she was 17 and she appeared in an episode of Two and a Half Men, titled, ironically, “Bazinga! That’s From a TV Show.”
Sonja Flemming/CBS
Next came parts on Mom and The Kominsky Method. Initially, she was hired for a lone episode of Young Sheldon as Mandy, a former local TV weathergirl who fell into an unlikely “May-September early August” romance with Georgie. That turned into many more, and now, she’s starring in Georgie & Mandy. “You can’t plan your life when Chuck Lorre gets in the way,” Osment says with a smile. “I’m so excited.”
“When we first cast Emily, it was a one-off,” Holland says. “We had a thought of Georgie dating an older woman, and we cast Emily, whom Chuck loves working with. She’s great. We brought her back for another episode and then another.”
Holland and Osment are happy to be returning to the multi-camera format after working on Young Sheldon’s single camera style of shooting. It’ll also be refreshing to tell stories with characters whose future lives aren’t etched in stone quite the way Sheldon’s was.
“We know Sheldon grows up, has friends, gets married, and wins a Nobel Prize,” Holland says. “So, there were [some] constraints around the stories we could tell. Now, there’s [more of a] clean slate. We don’t know much about Georgie. We know a little bit about the tire entrepreneurship, but we don’t know much [beyond that].
“It seems like there’s a whole world of stories that we can tell,” the exec adds. “We get to bring in new characters – [some] that people already know. But we get to tell entirely brand-new stories, and the show can go anywhere we decide to take it.”
Holland adds that shooting in front of a live studio audience will help “separate Georgie & Mandy from Young Sheldon so it doesn’t feel like we’re just doing Young Sheldon Season 7.5. We want to make it feel like its own show and stand on its own. We’ve missed doing audience shows.”
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Jordan is not as familiar with multi-camera work but he’s got his TV wife to provide support. “I’ve got someone by my side who’s going to give me some pointers,” the actor says.
And not that the show needs any lucky omens, but it will be filmed on The Big Bang Theory stage on the Warner Bros. lot.
Georgie & Mandy has a rich legacy of characters it can draw from, given that there’s lore not only from Young Sheldon but The Big Bang Theory, too. “Right now,” Holland says, “our concern is Emily and Montana, and Will Sasso and Rachel Bay Jones as her parents [Jim and Audrey].”
That said, Holland says, “[Georgie and Mandy] still live in Medford [Texas], and I think we’re going to see familiar faces from time to time.”
Does that mean we might see a Meemaw (Annie Potts) on occasion? “We might see a Meemaw,” Holland responds with a smile.
Who we may not be seeing – or at least hearing – is grown-up Georgie, played by Jerry O’Connell. Parsons narrated episodes of Young Sheldon but as Georgie & Mandy is multi-camera, the format doesn’t easily call for voiceovers from characters’ future selves. But older Georgie’s player is a familiar face to the series stars.
“I was excited when I met him,” Jordan says of meeting his TV older self. “We had just gotten back from a skiing trip. My face was all sunburn and chapped. Jerry’s a nice guy, really down to earth.”
“He played my dad on Young & Parents,” Osment says, “and now, he’s my…future baby-daddy husband.”
Might Osment do someone singing on Georgie & Mandy? The actress is also a singer. “I go by @bluebiirdmusic with my music and I have another single coming out next month,” she says. “Georgie has done some singing to our daughter on the show.”
Quips Jordan, “I sing…in the shower.”
Georgie & Mandy’s First Wedding, Fall 2024 (Thursdays, 8/7c), CBS
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