Zoe Perry appeared in seven of the “Young Sheldon” spinoff’s 22 Season 1 episodes, reprising her role as Georgie’s recently widowed mother. And when I caught up with her earlier this week on the set of the hit CBS sitcom, she was in the middle of filming her fifth appearance of Season 2 (the sophomore run’s 13th episode overall).
“It’s always a bit surreal to be on this set because everything feels so familiar, and yet it also feels like a fever dream,” she tells me. “We’ll be in some of our familiar sets, but there’s always something a little different — and it’s the same even in these storylines. Maybe there are emotions we’ve touched on [before], but everything’s a little different and obviously has to be now that George has passed.”
It’s the first time I’ve touched base with Perry since May 2024, when she, along with Lance Barber, joined me on Zoom to reflect on the death of the Cooper family patriarch — and what his untimely passing meant for Mary’s post-“Young Sheldon,” pre-“Big Bang Theory” trajectory.
Earlier this season, series star Montana Jordan (aka Georgie) gave TVLine his two cents on Mary moving forward with her life. But now, Perry is finally getting a chance to weigh in on Mary’s state of mind — and her ever-expanding role in the offshoot.
I thought they did such a great job infusing that episode with emotion and humor. You get the funnier, broad moments of her walking in and out of the coffee shop, and then the tender ones of her confiding in — I believe to Georgie — that this is difficult.
At the end of “Young Sheldon,” you saw how her grief was intermixed with almost some shame and self-flagellation. So this idea of pursuing something that might feel self-interested is hard for her. It’s such a difficult transition. It’s ripe with levels they’ve created, which is great.
It’s a very good question. It kind of lives for me — or the writers — in our imaginations because we don’t necessarily see the fretting behind the scenes. I imagine with any big decision that has high stakes like that, there will always be some lingering doubt. But it’s sweet how, even into this episode [we’re shooting now], there’s always a recurrence of this faith she has in Georgie and her kids — although maybe it’s a little more fraught with Missy at the moment. [Laughs]
They really set Georgie up as someone tenacious. Whether or not there are pitfalls along the way, he’ll never let failure totally get him down.
I think they’re so similar. That’s what’s so funny about the animosity — they themselves think they’re very different, but we can recognize in all kinds of relationships, even within families, that people who are so similar sometimes have the most difficulty with each other.
I’m curious to see where it evolves. I would happily bring on a friendship. Because of their similarities — and sometimes similar ways of looking at the world — it’s ripe for the taking. It could turn.