When “The Big Bang Theory” ended its massively successful 12-season run in 2019, the sitcom was still a top-rated smash that ranked as one of television’s most popular series ever. The legacy continued in a prequel spinoff, “Young Sheldon,” focusing on the childhood of genius Sheldon Cooper growing up in small-town Texas. With Sheldon portrayed by Jim Parsons, who transformed from a struggling actor to sitcom superstardom, “Young Sheldon” would focus on the transformation of the character from a brainiac kid to the quirky genius beloved by fans of “The Big Bang Theory.”

When assembling the cast for “Young Sheldon,” Iain Armitage was tapped for the title role, and fans witnessed Armitage’s transformation from child star to pilot over the course of that show’s seven seasons. Cast as Sheldon’s siblings were young actor Raegan Revord as his twin sister, Missy, and Montana Jordan as their older brother, Georgie.

As viewers of the show quickly observed, Jordan was not a Hollywood kid. While there have been many child stars who went off the deep end, Jordan has decidedly not been one of them. In fact, he experienced a childhood markedly similar to that of his character, born and raised in East Texas, before experiencing television stardom. To find out more, read on to experience the real-life transformation of “Young Sheldon” star Montana Jordan from child star to 21-year-old dad.

Montana Jordan’s origin story began far from the bright lights of Hollywood. Born in Longview, Texas, he was raised in the tiny East Texas town of Ore City, boasting a population of just over 1,200 people. As he told Glitter Magazine, the values and skills he learned there have continued to be his touchstones. “Well, growing up in Texas, you kinda find your way around,” he explained. “If a car breaks down, you fix it. If something breaks, you fix it.” He carried those abilities with him to Los Angeles, revealing that when he did have some downtime, he’d likely be spending it fixing up cars or tinkering in his workshop.

A Texan through and through, Jordan has demonstrated a tendency to gush about Ore City. “Well, you’re gonna run into a lot of respectful people, and you don’t find that everywhere,” Jordan said when asked to describe East Texas during an interview with CBS 19. Crediting the people of East Texas with being down to earth and hardworking, Jordan was asked what he missed about his small Texas town. “Everything,” he declared. “Every little thing you can think of, even if it’s just going to Sonic,” he added, referencing the big-in-Texas fast-food chain. 

“My hometown is where I find myself most grounded,” Jordan said in an interview with Garden & Gun, reiterating the work ethic that he inherited from his parents. “I grew up in a family that taught us to work for what you want. That’s how I was raised.”

While growing up in East Texas, Montana Jordan always had a keen interest in sports. He first began riding dirt bikes when he was all of five years old. “I spent a lot of time outdoors, hunting and riding dirt bikes,” he told Garden & Gun.

He eventually gravitated toward football and demonstrated talent at it. In fact, he wound up playing both defense and offense for the Ore City Rebels, his school team.

Health and fitness, he told Glitter Magazine, have been priorities for him as far back as he can remember, and he continues to pride himself on staying in shape. “When it comes to fitness, I’m all about it,” he declared, describing his commitment to keeping himself in top form. “You know how people say, ‘Summer is coming up. I better start working on my beach body.’ Well, my summertime is year-round,” he added.

Unlike the majority of child actors who hit it big in Hollywood, Montana Jordan had no aspirations to be on film or television when he was a kid. “Honestly, I kinda just fell into it,” he told Glitter Magazine, recalling how his entry into the world of acting came about when his mother, a schoolteacher, encouraged him to audition for a role in an upcoming movie. “I was living my 12-year-old life when my mom brought up the idea of potentially starring in a film, and the rest is history,” he said. 

That film was “The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter,” in which Jordan played the son of a deer hunter, portrayed by Josh Brolin. When Jordan learned he landed the role, he also discovered that he’d overcome a lot of competition. “When I talked to [the film’s director] Jody Hill this morning, he said Montana beat out 10,000 kids that tried out for this one part [nationwide],” Jordan’s mother, Kelli Smith, told the Longview News Journal.

In an interview for Rotten Tomatoes promoting the movie alongside co-stars Brolin and Danny McBride, Jordan admitted that acting wasn’t something he necessarily became interested in until he’d actually done it. “See, I didn’t think about acting at all before I got the movie,” he explained. “But when I did, I was like, ‘Wow, this is something that I would actually like to do.'” 

Being chosen from a field of 10,000 other kids for “The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter” could have been a fluke. However, that was disproven when lightning struck again with Montana Jordan’s second professional role: Georgie Cooper in “Young Sheldon.” Producers saw numerous young actors before settling on the 13-year-old Jordan. “The kid’s on a roll,” Jordan’s manager, Angie Edgar, observed to the Longview News Journal. 

While there’s a reason why “The Big Bang Theory” cast looks so familiar, “Young Sheldon’s young stars were all relative newcomers — something that was particularly true for Jordan. At that time, Jordan’s mom told the newspaper that she was still processing what it would mean now that her son had won a coveted role in a surefire smash TV series. “It really hasn’t hit us, yet,” she said. “We know there will be major changes in the family. Jordan seemed to take it in stride, believing he won the part because of how close the character was to his actual self. “When I first read the role of Georgie, I thought I was reading an autobiography,” he told Glitter Magazine. “Everything lined up to my life back in Texas … I could sit here and name 100 things that me and Georgie have in common.” 

Despite being a working actor, Jordan had never studied acting — and was in no hurry to actually undertake any training. “I had people want me to take acting classes, but I don’t really feel the need in that,” he told Garden & Gun. “I just want to stay authentic and everything. I guess it is all just natural.”

As Montana Jordan pointed out, the similarities he shared with Georgie Cooper certainly contributed to his being cast in the role. This did not go unnoticed by the show’s writers, who began infusing bits of Jordan into the character he portrayed on “Young Sheldon.”

Because grown-up Georgie hadn’t yet appeared on “The Big Bang Theory,” Jordan and the writers had the freedom to create the character and shape his evolution. “In the past I have given different ideas,” Jordan told StarryMag but downplayed how much input he’d actually had into his character’s storylines. “There are a couple different things that I’ve put out there in the air and I’ve talked to them about it,” he added. “You know, everything they write, they might not know about it from their personal life, but they do their research, and they, when the scripts come out, everything sounds right,” Jordan told CBS 19.

Another characteristic that Jordan shared with Georgie was his thick Texas accent, which is as authentic as they come. Everybody around the world thinks it’s not real,” Jordan told Garden & Gun, revealing that he actually had to tone it down a bit. “But in the first season, we did have to reshoot some scenes because my accent was so strong nobody could understand me,” he added. 

Adolescence can be a tumultuous time as the teenage years bring about an array of changes, both physical and mental. For Montana Jordan, those changes were all broadcast to an audience of millions as he literally grew up on television. “It’s been fun,” Jordan said when interviewed by WUSA 9 back in 2022. “When I started, the kids are now at that age when I started the show,” he observed, referencing TV siblings Iain Armitage and Raegan Revord.

At the time, “Young Sheldon” had just received an order from CBS for three subsequent seasons. This was something of a rarity, in that television networks tend to renew series on a year-by-year basis but demonstrated the network’s belief that the series would enjoy the same level of success as its previous seasons had. “It’s crazy to think about how we got picked up for three more seasons and it’ll be seven seasons after these three,” Jordan told CBS News Texas. “A fun fact is Raegan is 13 now and I was 13 when I booked the show.”

That said, Jordan also admitted he had a tough time watching his younger, smaller self in those earlier seasons, apparently experiencing a degree of self-consciousness. “When I look back at the first season, I personally cannot watch the first season because I don’t like seeing my 13-year-old self,” he said. “I just can’t do it.”

Filming a TV series requires long hours, and Montana Jordan has credited his family for the strong work ethic that’s sustained his successful acting career. “I grew up in a family that taught us to work for what you want. That’s how I was raised,” he told Garden & Gun.

The shooting schedule for “Young Sheldon” required two weeks of work, followed by a week off. Whenever possible, Jordan revealed he tried to get back to Texas, where he’d recently purchased 50 acres of land, the former site of his father’s family home. “Once I get on that land, I don’t like leaving, so I might clean fence rows or bale hay,” he explained to Garden & Gun. “We go out there and have a good time. I can just be a normal person.

Jordan put his love of his home state to the test when he answered a series of rapid-fire questions while appearing on Dallas-based CBS News Texas, forced to choose between such Texan food favorites as barbecue vs. Tex-Mex or whether he preferred Dr. Pepper or Big Red (a made-in-Texas beverage) when sipping soda. For the record, he preferred barbecue and Dr. Pepper.

During the swan-song season of “Young Sheldon” in 2024, rumors began emerging about the possibility of a spinoff focusing on Montana Jordan’s character, Georgie Cooper. And while some may have wondered what ever happened to Emily Osment, “Young Sheldon” viewers knew that the former “Hannah Montana” actor portrayed Mandy, Georgie’s 12-years-older girlfriend — and, by the end of that season, the mother of Georgie’s baby.

Those rumors became fact when, just a few weeks before the “Young Sheldon” series finale, CBS made it official by ordering a spinoff for the 2024-25 television season, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” The new series would be helmed by producers of “Young Sheldon” and “The Big Bang Theory,” but would hearken back to “the mothership” in that this new sitcom would be a multi-camera effort shot in front of a live studio audience, like “Big Bang” (“Young Sheldon” had been a single-camera series, filmed without an audience).

When interviewed by CBS 19, Jordan gave viewers a brief outline of what they could expect to see and how it would differ from the show that spawned it. “You get to see a more mature Georgie,” Jordan said. “You get to see him dealing with the loss of his father, he’s having to deal with all that and a baby on his hip and we all know the struggle with that.” With a ready-made audience anxious to tune in, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” made its debut in October 2024 and proved to be such a hit that it was picked up for a full season. The series was renewed, with a second season ordered for the 2025-26 TV season.

The shift from single-camera to multi-camera was a big adjustment for Montana Jordan, who had never acted in front of a live studio audience before. “It’s like filming a play,” Jordan said during an interview with ’90s to Now with Gerry Strauss, explaining that the cast rehearses from Wednesday through Friday and then film the episode the following Monday and Tuesday. Jordan could have found the experience intimidating, but instead he found performing before an audience to be downright thrilling. “There’s nothing like it,” he added. “It’s like ‘Friday Night Lights’ for a football player.”

While he admitted that having 180 people watching him in the bleachers while he acted was a new experience, he quickly grew to appreciate the multi-camera sitcom format after having been able to settle into the experience during the first season of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” “I think I like multi-cam better,” Jordan told Us Weekly. One reason for that, he explained, was that he and his fellow actors knew right away whether a punchline landed or whether it didn’t — which required waiting until the entire episode had been edited and put together on “Young Sheldon.” “It’s nice to get the immediate feedback,” he added. “If a joke’s not working, they’ll rewrite it right there.”

As Jordan told Parade, he wasn’t going to let his inexperience stand in his way of figuring it out and performing to the absolute peak of his abilities, a core trait that had driven him from the very beginning. “I didn’t know what I was doing on ‘Young Sheldon,’ and now I dang sure don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted. “But I’m gonna do the best I can.”

While Montana Jordan didn’t have to do much stretching to portray a sports-loving Texas teenager on “Young Sheldon,” the same was true when it came to playing a young father on “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” A few weeks before the “Young Sheldon” series finale aired, Jordan and his girlfriend Jenna Weeks welcomed a baby. Making the announcement via Instagram, Jordan shared a photo of himself holding his precious little bundle of joy alongside the caption, “God has blessed me with a beautiful babygirl. Emma Rae Jordan, Momma and Daddy love you. Forever and always.” 

Six months into the experience, Jordan gushed about fatherhood in a September 2024 interview with People. “It’s been great for me, man,” he exclaimed. “There’s nothing freaking better than being a dad.”

While appearing on “The Drew Barrymore Show,” Jordan was asked what he found most surprising about embarking on his new journey as a parent. “I’m good at goin’ with the flow, so I wouldn’t say anything surprises me,” he admitted, sharing his belief that becoming a dad was actually a fulfillment of his destiny. “I feel like I was put on this earth to be a father, I really do,” he added.

The similarities between Montana Jordan and his “Young Sheldon” character Georgie Cooper continued to accumulate when Jordan, like his character, got married. In June 2025, Montana tied the knot with Jenna Weeks in a ceremony that was sleek and sophisticated yet thoroughly Texan. “We wanted something that said country but elegant,” Weeks told People, describing the wedding’s theme as “classic cowboy.”

This was no simple ceremony, with the 200 guests including Jordan’s “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” co-stars Emily Osment, Will Sasso, Rachel Bay Jones, and Jessie Prez, along with his “Young Sheldon” sister Raegan Revord. As Jordan told the magazine, he was content to let Weeks “steer the boat” and handle the bulk of the wedding planning. One aspect both Jordan and Weeks agreed on was that their families would be front and center of the festivities. “Family is really important to us, and being surrounded by them fills our cup,” Weeks said, a sentiment with which Jordan agreed wholeheartedly. “I didn’t have any must-haves other than having our families celebrate with us,” he added.

Getting married was not something that Jordan took lightly, and he insisted he was in it for the long haul. “It means through thick and thin, she is the one till death do us part,” he declared. “And you know what, I might even look around for her after that in heaven.”