Young Sheldon's Raegan Revord learned of George Sr.'s fate too young

Seven seasons of “Young Sheldon” were full of tragedy: the patriarch of the family, George Sr. (Lance Barber), was destined to die in the canon of “The Big Bang Theory” before Sheldon went to college. While the show took some liberties with other elements of Old Sheldon's backstory—for example, George Sr., played by Lance Barber, is a much better father in the prequel sequel than Sheldon ever made him sound—the writers always knew there was no way around George Sr.'s death. . This event was simply too much of a part of Sheldon's character to be rewritten.

Many of the older cast members of “Young Sheldon” knew this inevitable tragedy from the beginning. But Raegan Revord, who played Sheldon's cool twin sister Missy, didn't find out until after the show started. As she explained in a recent interview:

“When I (first) did the show, I was, I mean, nine years old. The Big Bang is not for a nine-year-old, so I've never seen it before… I want to say it was in Season 1, because I feel like that's what my parents told me just because they saw how close we all are. And so we've gone through this show knowing we're going to get there at some point, but it was like a gem with George's scenes… That knowledge really helped hold these moments.

It's likely that Revord's parents told her the truth about George Sr.'s fate in Season 1, giving her enough time to come to terms with it before Season 7. For the rest of the cast, who all seemed to know about it from day one, that sense of inevitability certainly helped soften the blow a bit.

“(Lance Barber) knew from the start of the show that George Sr. was expired,” showrunner Steve Holland explained in a recent interview. “We slowed down time a little bit. For example, we stretched it out because the kids, our actual actors, Reagan and Iain, are 16 years old in real life. We stretched out one year in a couple of seasons to keep Lance alive as long as possible. We could , but he always knew it would happen. It's a similar approach to “That '70s Show,” which began in 1976 and stretched those four years to eight seasons to avoid the terrible 80's But just as the year 1980 could not be stopped, George's untimely death slowly took its toll on the cast of “Young Sheldon”.

Barber confirmed that he knew about it a press tour interview this year. “I had the luxury of being emotionally prepared for it from day one,” he said, though even knowing what was going to happen still didn't stop the production of his final episode from feeling celebratory for everyone involved. As the new Sheldon actor Iain Armitage explained“Everybody was crying. It was really hard. We love Lance so much.”