Jim Parsons Had A Very Specific Process For Learning His Lines On The Big Bang Theory

For 12 seasons and the same number of years, Jim Parsons played the stubborn, brilliant scientist Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” — and according to an oral history of the series, Parsons had a really unique process when it came to learning Sheldon’s long, super-specific monologues and diatribes. 

In Jessica Radloff’s 2022 book “The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series,” showrunner and creator Chuck Lorre told the author that Parsons always came to set completely ready to perform. “Jim’s process was to be wildly prepared,” Lorre recalled. “He made all his decisions the night before the table read as to how he was going to read his script.”

Parsons confirmed that he did prepare quite a lot while playing Sheldon. “I really did love putting in the time, staying home on the weekends and repeating these words,” Parsons said. He continued:

“It brought me a lot of joy and pride to be able to use these multisyllabic words they were giving me and still ferret out the comedy rhythms they put in there. I loved the chance to solve that puzzle. I’m not saying it didn’t get a little tiresome and old at some point, but overall, I really did love it. And it was just such a joy to be able to go into a pretape day and a show night with that level of confidence behind me that I knew what I was doing. That’s where it would remind me as much of an athletic event as anything. I wanted to be ready to nail my triple axel when it was time to skate for the gold.” 

There’s something that Parsons isn’t saying here, though … which is that he wrote all of his lines down on notecards and stuck them all over the set in case he forgot anything. 

Understandably, Jim Parsons wanted to ensure that he remembered some of Sheldon’s most complicated lines — and it’s also just really funny that the set was apparently covered in handwritten note cards with his lines on them. According to Kevin Sussman, who almost played Howard Wolowitz on the series before playing comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Howard was, of course, ultimately played by Simon Helberg), Parsons was never without his enormous collection of index cards.

“When people talk about what Jim was like on set … while he had a lot of fun, he was the one that had the most work,” Sussman told Jessica Radloff in the book. “Every episode he had these frickin’ monologues with all this jargon, and so much of what I remember about hanging out on the set — which was mostly like hanging out with your friends at summer camp — was Jim constantly walking around with a big stack of index cards going over his lines. I used to think to myself, ‘Holy cow, he’s doing this every episode.’“

Kaley Cuoco, who played Sheldon’s neighbor turned best friend Penny, couldn’t quite believe how Parsons memorized his lines. As she said to Radloff, “Jim always wrote down every single line of his down on note cards, which blew my mind. You’d open a drawer on the set and there would be note cards.”

Frankly, the idea of putting lines on notecards that he could study between takes — or even perhaps sneakily use while filming a take — is sort of brilliant, but as Jim Parsons also revealed in Jessica Radloff’s book, one particular type of scene allowed him to cheat the system even more (so to speak). “There wasn’t a set piece that didn’t have my scripts or note cards in it. Now, it was rare that I was able to use them during a scene; it was always just a reference between takes,” Parsons began before saying that his real trick was utilizing a notepad whenever possible.

See, as a man of science, Sheldon could conceivably be carrying around a notepad of equations or something (I’m not a scientist, so I can only assume), which allowed Parsons to just … hide his lines there. “But oh, how I loved a notepad!” Parsons opined. “It was so rare that I had a scene where it made sense for me to be with a notepad, but to know you’re walking into a scene where you could see your lines the whole time … what a luxury! That is a whole other style of acting! It may not even be called acting, I’m not sure. But I loved it; it was such a treat.”

Obviously, Jim Parsons’ process on “The Big Bang Theory” was pretty intense — what with all the notepads and index cards — but occasionally, he ran into a problem. After writing all of his lines down on his beloved index cards for any given scene, sometimes the lines themselves would change, and in Jessica Radloff’s book, Parsons admitted that he really, really hated these sudden script changes, and even brought up one specific example of a time he freaked out over an adjustment.

“There were a couple of times it irritated me because it was irritating to have to work on something so long and then it would change,” Parsons confessed. “It sounds so childish in retrospect, but it was my honest reaction. There was one instance specifically where they changed my stuff before we even did a take. I came down, and I lost my sh*t. I really did. Now what does that mean, exactly? I don’t know, we did the show. But for me, I got really mad. It just made me angry and kind of close to tears in a weird way, because I had been drilling these lines and they had the director say, ‘OK, we’re going to cut this, we’re going to change that.’ I was like, ‘Wait, we’re not even going to hear it first?!'”

Parsons also admitted that this didn’t happen very often and that he trusted the writers to always make sure the scripts were as perfect as possible, but that he still … didn’t really like it. “But that was rare to get changes … and most of the time, it was really thrilling because their changes would be really good, and you had something fresh to give the studio audience who had already seen the scene a few times,” the actor said. “And so that was really fun … when it wasn’t frustrating.”

“The Big Bang Theory” is streaming on Max now.