‘Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage' showrunner breaks down season finale surprises, teases Season 2, and details the hit sequel's origins

Yahoo

16-05-2025

It's official: in the universe of The Big Bang Theory, the third time is not only a charm, but it turned out to be the biggest network sitcom of the season. Add in the fact that George & Mandy's First Marriage has a leading man (Montana Jordan) who's just 22 years old and had never previously tried to get laughs in a multi-cam format series, and CBS' top 10 ratings hit — a direct spin-off of Young Sheldon — is one of the biggest success stories on television.
George & Mandy's First Marriage co-creator and co-showrunner Steve Holland (also a veteran of The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon), talked to Gold Derby about the series sparked from a character pairing that was originally planned for one episode, how the producers were very intentional in deciding how often to bring in beloved Young Sheldon cast for guest appearances, and how those season finale surprises should absolutely have viewers questioning how literal the name of the series will turn out to be.
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Gold Derby: First of all, congratulations on the ongoing, massive success of Cooper family universe.
Steve Holland: Who would have thought? I mean, you know, obviously we were excited about the show. So the pressure for us was just trying to deliver a good show. But we didn't know when we decided to put it back to multi-cam, which was exciting. We were hopeful that an audience would follow us, but we didn't know for sure. It was a little bit of a leap of faith and with bated breath that we watched, but it felt like the people who tuned in seemed to have stuck with the show for the season. So that's been great.
The audience loves these characters. They love the Cooper family. As much as they loved Sheldon and everybody else in , they really have embraced this family and now the McAllister's, too. But the Coopers have all endeared themselves to viewers.
[Georgie & Mandy] has been a really fun way to get to continue those stories in a slightly different format. I think early on trying to figure out … we always knew we wanted to use the Young Sheldon cast in guest-starring roles, but we weren't quite sure how often or how much we should use them. It really felt like we found a great mix of they feel like a part of this world, but it still feels like its own show. So that was really fun to see that kind of shape itself out as the season went on.
As much as I would like to see Annie Potts in a Mema spin-off, did really hit a satisfying sweet spot of the Coopers popping in, and genuinely interacting with the newlyweds and Georgie's new in-laws. We got some sweet and funny moments with Memas, Mary (Zoe Perry), Missy (Raegan Revord), and Meemaw's boyfriend Dale (Craig T. Nelson) throughout the season.
But I think we have to start with touching on just how super impressive Montana Jordan, who has been so fantastic as Georgie from the beginning of , has been brilliant as Georgie, who is maturing in major ways, but Montana maintains that playful charm and optimism and confidence that the character has had since the beginning. And he's also nailing the humor and timing of his first experience in multi-cam.
And it's a big thing. That was the one sort of question mark. We knew the rest of this cast were multi-cam professionals, and Montana had never done it, and we were talking to him about it. And the great thing is that Montana, like Georgie, is just such a decent, hardworking guy. And he was just like, 'Well, I'm going to give it my best. I won't let you down. I'm going to do everything I can.'
And to watch him, just out of the gate, be good at it, and to get better at it as the season went on, and watch him find little ways to spin jokes … like, it's not a thing that you can really teach. I think it's just sort of a thing you've got. And it was a comfort and relief to see that our lead was actually good at this. We believed he would be, and Emily [Osment] really believed he would be. Emily's like, 'He's got this, he's going to be great at this.' I think being surrounded by a cast that's also good at it, and that cast is so lovely, and they're so close, and I think he had that support there to also just learn and grow. He's outstanding to watch. I mean, carrying a show on your shoulders is not an easy feat, and he makes it look easy.
He does. And that whole cast, and the recurring guest cast, has great chemistry.
I think so, too. And we talked about, on Young Sheldon, as we got into Georgie and Mandy's relationship, one of the things, I mean, obviously, there's this weird … how they started their relationship is odd and unusual. And there's this age gap. But they're so charming together. And it never feels out of place. They never feel like they're not a couple who cares about each other. Yes, they just they're so great together.
Going back to and the beginnings of a little bit, at what point did the idea of a Georgie and Mandy spin-off come about? Was it before the audience met Emily as Mandy or after?
No, no, definitely not before. I mean, when the audience met Mandy, that was really just a one-off episode. We thought it would be fun for Georgie to meet an older woman and at his age, because he had already dropped out of high school and was working. So he seemed older, and that seemed fun. And then we cast Emily, and Emily was great, so we brought her back, and they had such a fun chemistry. And then [co-creator and executive producer] Chuck [Lorre] at some point said, 'Well, if you're really going to keep things interesting, have her get pregnant.'
So we called Emily, and we're like, 'Hey, so we want to bring Mandy back more, and here's the storyline.' And she was obviously thrilled and excited, and you could just see them going into the last couple of seasons of Young Sheldon. They just had this great spark. You could see it on set. You could see the crew, who would joke about, "Well, when are we going to see that show?" So I think it had begun to form in the back of our minds that that was probably the next show we're going to do. At that point, we didn't know how much longer Young Sheldon was going to go on. And as we were talking about it, we were talking about going into Season 7, and talking about, we knew George Sr. was going to die. We knew Sheldon was going to move away, and we sort of had discussions about whether there was a Season 8 and what that would look like. And the more we talked about it, the more it felt like this was the end of Young Sheldon. The story arc had reached its natural conclusion. It was very much about adult Sheldon reflecting back on his parents and especially his dad.
It was not fair to the show to keep going, which was hard, because we loved the show, we love the cast. But then as we're talking about that, we're like, 'Well, Chuck, we have another show we want to pitch, and it's Georgie and Mandy, and we want to do it as a multi-cam.' And he got excited about it, and we had the meeting with CBS, and we had to tell them this was going to be the last season of Young Sheldon, but we had this new show we wanted to do. And they were very, very supportive. (CBS Entertainment President) Amy Reisenbach's been so supportive of this the whole way through.
So it sort of emerged naturally, and it emerged from watching those two actors and the chemistry they had.
So now we're getting into this first season. Was it intentional to keep Georgie and Mandy's world fairly small, so that the audience got the chance to really get to know the McAllisters?
Yeah, absolutely.
Because we had met Mandy's mom and dad, Audrey (Rachel Bay Jones) and Jim (Will Sasso). But we got the chance to get to know them really well, beyond the first impressions of them on . And maybe people were not loving Audrey so much when we first met her. But this deeper dive on her character, her relationships with Mandy and Mandy's brother, Connor (Dougie Baldwin), and her feisty, but loving marriage with Jim, gave us a more layered person, and I think there's a lot to like about her.
I mean, her role on Young Sheldon was definitely antagonist. I know coming into this show people were ready to hate her, but Rachel is such a lovely person. A lot of that comes through, but also, we knew that a little bit of our job this season was to flesh out these characters. So I think to keep it small was absolutely intentional. I think that's been a Chuck thing from early on, to focus on your core characters, get people to love your core characters. You can flesh out the world later on, but at the beginning, it's about these characters. Let people get to know them. That gave us a chance to see different sides of Audrey and different sides of Jim. I think she's still, obviously she didn't change who she was, but you start to understand her more, and you start to see that there's more to her and Jim's relationship than just her being sort of this domineering wife. There's also a lot of loving moments. I think Rachel's always really great at finding those moments and even adding those moments in so you get these other facets to Audrey. I mean, I love Rachel, so I'm biased, but by the end of the season especially, I think she's such an interesting, fun, complicated, wonderful character, so I hope audiences went on that journey as well.
Another new character in Georgie's life is Ruben (Jessie Prez), his co-worker at Jim's tire shop. Ruben is not a fan of Georgie, especially since he sees this younger, inexperienced guy being given a role of authority over him because he's Jim's new son-in-law. There were a lot of surprises at the end of the season, and in the season finale, and now that Georgie and Ruben are partners in buying Jim's business, it's fair to assume Ruben is going to be more central next season, and that we'll get to know a lot more about him?
Yeah, and that was by design, and also going into that finale, you know, looking for ways to shake things up and keep things interesting. But as the season progressed, we realized that the tire store … the show didn't live at the tire store a lot. So it was really difficult to get Ruben into stories. And he's so great, and Jessie's so great. We really wanted to find a way to make him more seamlessly integrate into part of their world. And so this just seemed like an interesting chance to sort of shake things up, to bring more problems and more hardships at Georgie, but also a way to bring Jessie, bring Ruben into the show more. And now the he and Georgie are partners, I think that relationship is going to be a lot of fun to explore in season two, because they don't really like each other that much. But they have to work together, and they have this business that has to succeed — Georgie's mom put up her house as collateral — he cannot fail. So I think there's going to be a lot of fun dynamics to explore next season between the two of them.
And Mandy now has her dream job, or a dream job, on TV, and we meet her new boss (Christopher Gorham), who is also her ex-boss and ex-boyfriend who broke up with her and led her back to Medford and meeting Georgie in that planned one-off episode that led to the highest-rated network comedy this season. Will Christopher Gorham, who was another fun surprise, return for season two?
That's our hope, that he'll continue in season two. He just got cast on Sheriff Country (a spin-off of Fire Country), but we've been in contact with their producers and luckily, it's in the CBS family, so we're hopeful that things work out, because he was terrific. And that character, you know, we don't see him all the time, but I think it's important for us to see him pop up in Season 2.
He did such a nice job in the audition, and there's a version of that character that could feel more predatory or more, you know, villainous, and he was just so sort of sweet and earnest in the moment. He killed it in the audition, and what got him the role was when he says, 'I'd love to see you happy' [to Mandy], and he just said it like there was just the right amount of sincerity … there wasn't anything inappropriate. You can tell that there's still some lingering feelings there, but it was also very sweet and earnest and that was the moment we were like, 'That's the guy!'
Even if it doesn't work out for Christopher to return, will that character continue to cause problems for Georgie and Mandy in season two?
Yeah, I think he will, and I'm confident that it will work out with Chris. We have not broken out season two yet. I don't know where it all will lead, but him being there is a complication even if nothing happens between [he and Mandy], because Georgie is jealous about it, and she can't not spend time with him, because she works with him. So there's complications that come from him being there, whatever happens between the two of them.
Georgie was ticked off to find out about Mandy's ex being her boss, but do we think it would have been such an issue if she had just told him from the beginning?
I think it would have been less of an issue. I think the fact that she didn't tell him is part of it. But I also think Georgie is such a sort of mature, responsible character, but he's still young. Like, he's still 20 years old, and he still doesn't have a lot of experience in relationships. So for him to be jealous of this, you know, this man who's more Mandy's age and who she has a past with also felt real. And it's nice to have Georgie have some flaws. There are so many great things about Georgie. and it's nice to see some, flaws in there, too. He is young, and he is inexperienced, and I think jealousy seems real and natural for him.
This is kind of the first major issue between them since they were married. And there is still the issue of Georgie keeping his real age from Mandy in the beginning, and then him deciding on his own to take a big swing and allowing his mom to put up her home as collateral for a loan for him to buy the tire dealership from Jim. This is maybe the first sign we have that the title of the show might refer to the divorce we know happens at some point. That was another big surprise, that potential storyline happening so soon in the series. Is that what you wanted the audience to think about?
I think one of the different things about the title is it is a nod to things we know are going to happen and also an acknowledgement that things are not going to go smoothly. But I think one of the fun things about it, too, is that it gives these stories real stakes, because you do know at some point their relationship has problems, whether they get back together after it or whatever. We know this is their first marriage. So knowing that, I think allows us to tell these stories, and there's real jeopardy in them, because this could be the thing that breaks them up. We don't know. It might not be, but you know that something does. And so to plant those seeds of what those things could be, you know that it's not just all BS. You know that something is actually gonna be the thing that does it, and maybe it's gonna be this.
The relationship issues, and the surprise of Georgie starting his journey to becoming the tire mogul we know he becomes, when he's just 20, were the biggest surprises of the finale. They were surprises in a good way in that, as you said, they did show that there are some real stakes here, and it's starting right away. We're not just going to have happy sitcom times; it's just the end of the first season, but we're in it now.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think there's a couple of fun things about that. One of them is to sort of shake things up in a way that, hopefully for audiences, but certainly for us, that we get excited about the story possibilities of season two. And I think both of those things that happened in the finale got us excited about how we could tell these kinds of stories next season. But I think also one of the cores of the show is this couple that genuinely loves each other, but they have a complicated relationship and not an easy relationship. And throwing these things at them, these two things for them where they both had big wins at the end of the season — he has a business he's starting and she kind of gets her dream job — which are both positive things, but it doesn't necessarily mean those are positive things for their marriage … it's going to add complications, and it's going to make it harder for them to focus. And there's a little bit of jealousy, but Georgie also is going to have to spend so much time at work, because he needs this new thing to be a success, and it adds stress on top of stress.
And so watching these people, you know, we're always interested in stories where no one's the bad guy, where people both have legitimate points of view, but there's still friction and still fights. And I think that's going to come up. Both of these characters want this marriage to work and love each other. There's also a lot of outside things that are being thrown at them, and it's, it's a lot to take.
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