For For 12 seasons and as many years, Jim Parsons played stubborn, brilliant scientist Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory — and according to the show's oral history, Parsons had a indeed unique process when it comes to learning Sheldon's long, super specific monologues and diatribes.

In Jessica Radloff's 2022 book The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series, showrunner and creator Chuck Lorre told the author that Parsons always came to the set fully prepared to perform.. "Jim's process was to be wildly prepared," Lorre recalls. "He made all his decisions the night before the table as if he was reading his script."

Parsons confirmed that he had indeed been preparing enough a lot while playing Sheldon. "I really wanted to take time out, stay home on the weekends and repeat these words," Parsons said. He continued:

“It brought me a lot of joy and pride to be able to use these polysyllabic words that they were giving me and still discover the rhythms of comedy that they were putting in there. I wanted the chance to solve that puzzle. I'm not saying I didn't. I didn't get a little tired and old at some point, but overall I really enjoyed it and it was just such a joy to be able to go into a pre-tape day and show night with that level of confidence behind me that I knew what I was doing, it's where it would remind me of an athletics event like anything else, I wanted to be ready to nail my triple axel when it came time to skate for gold.

There is something Parsons is not saying here, although ... what is it that he wrote everyone he put his lines down on sticky notes and taped them all over the kit in case he forgot something.

Understandably, Jim Parsons wanted to make sure he remembered some of Sheldon's trickiest lines - and it's also really funny that the set was apparently covered in handwritten cards with his lines on them. According to Kevin Sussman, who almost played Howard Wolowitz on the show before playing comic book store owner Stuart Bloom (Howard, of course, ended up being played by Simon Helberg), Parsons was never without his vast collection of index cards.

"When people talk about what Jim was like on set ... while he was having a lot of fun, he had the most work," Sussman told Jessica Radloff in the book. "Every episode he had these snarky monologues with all this jargon, and so much of what I remember about hanging out on set — which was mostly like hanging out with your friends at summer camp — Jim was always walking around with a big pile of index cards going through his lines, I was like, “Holy cow, he does this every episode."

Kaley Cuoco, who played Sheldon's neighbor-turned-best-friend Penny, couldn't quite believe how Parsons remembered his lines. As he told Radloff, “Jim was always taking notes everyone a row of his down note cards, that blew my mind. "You'll open a drawer on the set and there will be note cards."

Honestly, the idea of ​​putting lines on notes that he could study between takes—or even maybe covertly use while taking a picture—is kind of brilliant, but as Jim Parsons discovered in Jessica Radloff's book, a special kind of scene enabled him to cheat the system even more (so to speak). “There wasn't a set that didn't have my scripts or note cards. Now it was rare that I could use them during the scene; it was always just a reference between takes,” Parsons began earlier. saying his real trick is using notepad whenever possible.

See, as a man of science, Sheldon could be carrying around a notebook of equations or something (I'm not a scientist, so I can only guess), which allowed Parsons to just ... hide his lines in there. "But oh, how I wanted a notebook!" Parsons thought. “It's been so rare that I've had a scene where it makes sense to be with a notebook, but to know that you're walking into a scene where you can see your lines the whole time... what a luxury! It's a completely different style of acting, I'm not sure, but I loved it.

Apparently, Jim Parsons' process on "The Big Bang Theory" was pretty intense — as with all notebooks and index cards — but occasionally, he ran into a problem. After writing down all of his lines on his preferred index cards for any given scene, sometimes the lines themselves would changeand in Jessica Radloff's book, Parsons admitted that he really, really hated these sudden script changes, and even gave a specific example of a time when he freaked out due to an adjustment.

"There were a few times that it irritated me because it was irritating to work on something for so long and then it would change," Parsons admitted. “It sounds so childish in retrospect, but that was my honest reaction. There was one instance in particular where they changed my stuff before we even did a download. I went down and lost my s*t. I really did. Now what that means, I don't know, we did the show, but for me, it just pissed me off and kind of brought me close to tears in a weird way. and they told the director, "Okay, we're going to cut this, we're going to change that." I said, "Wait, we're not even going to hear it first?!"

Parsons also admitted that it didn't happen very often and that he trusted the writers to always make sure the scripts were as perfect as possible, but that he still ... didn't really like it. "But it was rare to get changes ... and most of the time, it was really exciting because their changes would be really good, and you had something fresh to give to a studio audience that had already seen the scene a few times." said the actor. "And so it was really fun... when it wasn't frustrating."

The Big Bang Theory is now streaming on Max.