She built a career playing her own mother, and the strangest part is how well it worked.
At a glance
- Known for
- Mary Cooper on *Young Sheldon*, CBS's most-watched comedy for five straight seasons
- Before fame
- Too shy to act in high school, started performing at Northwestern just to make friends
- Off-screen
- Married producer Gab Taraboulsy in Italy in 2022, keeps almost no public social media presence
Rise to Fame
A nine-year-old playing her mother's character in a Roseanne flashback isn't a career. It's a novelty. She showed up once at nine, once at eleven, as young Jackie Harris, then disappeared from screens for over a decade while she went to college and worked stages nobody was watching.
The breakthrough was the same trick she'd pulled as a kid: playing a younger version of her mother's character. CBS cast her as Mary Cooper on Young Sheldon in 2017, the role Laurie Metcalf originated on The Big Bang Theory. Between Roseanne and Young Sheldon, she'd ground through guest spots on Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and NCIS, the kind of credits that fill out an IMDb page without anyone remembering your face. This time, 141 episodes, and they did.
In the Spotlight
The numbers did the talking. Young Sheldon was the most-watched network comedy for five consecutive seasons. The series finale pulled 9.32 million same-day viewers in May 2024, the kind of run that turns a supporting player into a syndication fixture.
She's still in the Mary Cooper business. The spin-off Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage brought her back for 15 episodes, and CBS renewed it for a third season. She guest-starred on the final season of The Conners, opposite her mother. The nepo baby conversation follows her around, and she doesn't dodge it. She's acknowledged the privilege openly, which is either refreshing honesty or good PR. Probably both.
Side Notes
Her father co-founded Steppenwolf Theatre in 1974 with Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney. Her mother was part of the founding ensemble. Growing up around that kind of institutional theater credibility doesn't guarantee talent, but it guarantees you know what good acting looks like before you can drive.
She took the stage seriously enough to perform at Steppenwolf herself, did Anna Christie opposite her father in 2015, and shared a Broadway stage with her mother in The Other Place in 2013. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she's said they actively discouraged her from acting until adulthood. For someone raised backstage at Steppenwolf, she keeps a remarkably low profile. No social media presence. She revealed her engagement during a Zoom awards show, almost as an afterthought.