The teen actor, who auditioned for the sitcom when he was 8, tells PEOPLE why he couldn’t have asked for a “better way to grow up”
As Young Sheldon embarks on its final season, Iain Armitage is reflecting on the last seven years and what lies ahead.
The 15-year-old actor was 8 when he auditioned to play the younger version of Jim Parsons’ character Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. The fact that he essentially grew up on the CBS sitcom isn’t lost on him, he exclusively tells PEOPLE.
“It’s been half my life, which is kind of wild to think about, but just so fun, so wonderful, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to grow up,” he says, adding, “Every single person I get to work with, I feel so honored to get to be working with and get to be their costar or … get to be part of their work and part of their livelihood.”
The actor will continue to voice the iconic character of Shaggy in the upcoming Christmas-themed animated movie Scoob!: Holiday Haunt, joining a cast that includes Mark Hamill, Ming-Na Wen, Cristo Fernandez and the late Andre Braugher. Afterwards, Armitage says he would love to tackle a project on the “exact opposite end of the spectrum” from Young Sheldon.
“It’s funny, because I’ve had so much fun getting to do this character for seven awesome years that it would be cool to do something … just completely different from Sheldon in every way,” he explains, adding, “I would love to do something Indie, maybe something action, maybe something sci-fi, just something super different and weird. Like a drama, again, kind of Big Little Lies.”
While some actors like to keep something from a show or film they’ve worked on as a reminder of their time on the project, Armitage says he’d prefer to hold onto one or two traits from his singularly unique character.
“It’s funny, because I always sort of joke about like method acting [which] seems so silly to me … But it is weird. I really do kind of feel like half-Sheldon, half-Iain,” he admitted. “I would like to keep the brains. I would like to keep the once-in-a-generation genius part, but in lieu of that, I think the way he approaches the world is funny and unique, and I always hope to approach the world and people as uniquely and really focused on each person as I can.”
