Arts & Culture

He Stole Scenes on Young Sheldon. Now Montana Jordan Is Riding His Texas Charm to a New Spinoff.

With Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage set to premiere tonight, we caught up with the Cooper family’s lovable breakout star

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Photo: Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Montana Jordan arrives at a screening of Young Sheldon during PaleyFest on Sunday, April 14, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

Talk about life imitating art: In the final episodes of the hugely popular TV series Young Sheldon, a Texas-set prequel to the hugely popular The Big Bang Theory, the titular boy genius’s older brother, Georgie, became a teenage dad. In real life, Montana Jordan, the twenty-one-year-old Texan actor whose distinct twang endeared the streetwise-but-sweet Georgie to viewers, welcomed his own baby girl just days after the finale aired last May. Fans can rejoice that Jordan will reprise the role in the spinoff Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, premiering tonight on CBS. We asked Jordan to tell us more about the curiously titled show, becoming a dad, and why the Lone Star State is still home.

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Given the title of your new show, should we assume there’s no chance of the young lovebirds making this thing work?

To be honest, I really don’t know. From Georgie’s appearances on The Big Bang Theory at a later date, we already know that’s his storyline, where he gets married a couple of times. But maybe he gets remarried to Mandy at some point [laughs]. You know, I think we’re going to go about twenty seasons on this show, so we’ll just have to see what happens.

photo: Robert Voets/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc.
From left: Actors Rachel Bay Jones, Montana Jordan, and Emily Osment.


Has your recent, real-life dadhood informed your performance of Georgie as a first-time dad?

As an actor, I like to make everything look natural, and anything you get to do in real life helps with that. With his father passing away, Georgie has a lot on his plate, and now he’s got a baby on his hip. Handling a baby every day in real life makes it all look more natural. Plus, I’ve got two nieces I spend time with, so I already knew something about kids. I love them all.

Tell us about life in Longview, Texas.

My hometown is where I find myself most grounded. I grew up in a family that taught us to work for what you want. That’s how I was raised. I spent a lot of time outdoors, hunting and riding dirt bikes. We have a good schedule making the show, working two weeks and then a week off, so I try to get back to Texas as much as I can. I’ve been able to buy about fifty acres of land that was my dad’s old homeplace when it came up for sale. The old house is gone, so I moved a cabin out there. Once I get on that land, I don’t like leaving, so I might clean fence rows or bale hay. We go out there and have a good time. I can just be a normal person.

Your partner, Jenna Weeks, is also from that area. Did you know each other growing up?

We didn’t, because after seventh grade I was making Young Sheldon and didn’t go to school there. But when I was back, I went to a Cody Johnson concert in Nacogdoches, and she was there too. Neither one of us had really wanted to go to the concert at first, but that’s where we met. God put us there for a reason, I think.

When people first meet you, are they surprised that Georgie’s thick Southern accent is just the way you naturally speak?

Everybody around the world thinks it’s not real. Thankfully, with Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy set in Texas, I’ve only been in roles where I’m allowed to have my accent. But in the first season, we did have to reshoot some scenes because my accent was so strong nobody could understand me. And when I coached Raegan Revord, who plays my sister, Missy, on her accent, they said I coached her too much and made her dial it down a bit.

photo: Troy Harvey / 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Jordan as Georgie in the series premiere.


So how is being a new dad going? In real life, that is.

Emma Rae has been the best baby. She eats good and sleeps at night. She’s starting to teethe, so chewing on stuff. You can’t get stressed out, because a baby is going to do what a baby is going to do. I’m good at going with the flow, and we try to just do the same things as before we had a baby. That might be why she sleeps so well, because we run the vacuum around her all the time.

What costume will Emma Rae be rocking for her first Halloween?

You know, we were talking about that the other day. Jenna was showing me a little bumblebee costume and a lamb costume. So cute. But then somebody said that we have to match whatever costume she’s wearing. Maybe we can be three Pooh Bears or something.

The baby hasn’t completely stolen the spotlight from your fuzzball dog on social media.

Oh yeah, Dolly the maltipoo. That was our first pet we had together. I tell everybody this now. For a young couple, a dog is a great way to get set up for kids. It makes you grow up a lot, and shows if you have the time and patience to handle taking care of something. It’s good to have dogs, for sure.


Steve Russell is a Garden & Gun contributing editor who also has written for Men’s Journal, Life, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. Born in Mississippi and raised in Tennessee, he resided in New Orleans and New York City before settling down in Charlottesville, Virginia, because it’s far enough south that biscuits are an expected component of a good breakfast.


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