Iain Armitage Had A Surprising Habit On The Set Of Young Sheldon

It’s probably pretty safe to assume that some of the actors who star on the hit CBS sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon” might share a few of their nerdier traits with their onscreen counterparts. After all, years of filming as characters like intense geek Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) is sure to rub off on anyone, and as the writers get to know the actors they can inject a bit more of their personalities into the character as well. It’s a bit of art and life imitating one another, and in the case of Iain Armitage, who plays the aforementioned Sheldon on “Young Sheldon,” the actor did one surprising thing on set that feels somehow appropriate for the character.

In an interview with KCTV5Armitage’s co-star Emily Osment, who portrays Sheldon’s future sister-in-law, Mandyrevealed that Armitage would frequently walk around the “Young Sheldon” set speaking Russian to himself. No one else on the production spoke Russian, she said, but he had learned it during COVID-19 lockdown and was simply fascinated. That kind of hyper-fixation upon a new idea or thing to learn sounds pretty in-line for Sheldon, hinting that the two might be quite a bit alike.

Osment shared that around set, “It’s all Russian, all the time. No one speaks Russian except for Iain, but Iain speaks a lot of Russian. It’s hilarious.” She said that he also has a “Russian dance” that he does, which brings to mind a lot of leg-kicking with crossed arms. In an interview with CTV NewsArmitage explained a bit further, answering a question about his Russian skills in the language before saying:

“I’m on an app, but my favourite way to learn is through talking to other people. I have some friends at a local park. I like to go to speak Russian or Ukrainian, Armenian, sort of around that area. For the most part, we can talk and it’s just really cool.”

That probably explains a bit of why Armitage was speaking the language to himself, if only to keep practicing, and it sounds like he just really loves languages. Same, honestly, though I could never learn Russian in the span of a few months. Maybe Armitage is a bit of a young genius just like his character, too? A little bit of muttering in Russian is far from the weirdest thing an actor’s ever done on setso it sounds like Armitage is just a smart young linguist in training who brought his latest language love to work with him. As someone who got in trouble for practicing glyphs in the margins of their physics notes, it’s pretty relatable. Maybe Osment can try to learn a few phrases by the time Armitage eventually has a cameo on her spin-off, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,“ for fun.