Jim Parsons wanted to be clear he wasn’t stoned. Although he did this with a laugh.
The former Big Bang Theory star had just finished telling a story about putting good intentions out into the world and didn’t want to sound too “woo-woo”.
“The creative opportunities respond to these almost unseen signals you’re sending out,” he told news.com.au. “It’s kind of keeping putting my energy out there and the right people for me will hear it and come in.”
Maybe that does sound a bit bohemian, but Parsons was reflecting on how his career has evolved over the years since he broke out in a big way in the popular sitcom.
Take, for example, the reason he’s on the zoom today – promoting his new film, Spoiler Alert, which he also produced.
Spoiler Alert is a biographical drama based on American journalist Michael Ausiello’s memoirs, detailing his relationship with his husband Kit Cowan, who died from neuroendocrine cancer. That’s not a spoiler, the movie opens with it – hence the title.
Parsons said he got involved after Ausiello, who has covered American TV for TV Guide and his own site, TVLine, for more than two decades, asked Parsons to host a Q&A for a book reading.
“I only had this because the book was thrown in my lap by Ausiello,” Parsons recalled. But then it was Parson’s choice to produce and adapt the memoirs, which he cried through while reading.
It’s that marriage of intentional choice and a little bit of the universe’s woo-woo magic that’s seen the actor take on a string of meaningful projects, which has also included the screen adaptation of Boys in the Band and Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood.
“I’m seeing more and more the ways in which I can at least aim things in a direction,” he explained. “It doesn’t just have to be left up to complete chance. There are obviously so many factors you can’t control.
“In the past several years of my life, I’ve aimed my intention in that way to make the work more personal. That doesn’t necessarily mean playing a gay character or not, but it does mean learning something about myself while doing the work.
“For the younger part of my career, and even into my thirties and forties, I allowed it to be much more left up to chance.”
Parsons said he’s been able to say “no” more because the opportunities have evolved – and fully empathises with when it is hard for an actor to say no.
“Between needing the experience and needing to pay rent, how do you say ‘no’?
“Now there are more opportunities in front of me and I don’t have to clamour as hard to be, ‘Hi, I’m in the room, I’m here’.
“I feel a sense of evolution in the roles that I take and a sense of growth from one to the next as if there’s some almost unseen trajectory going on. I’m not sure if that’s because of the new types of roles or I’m learning to make a more intentional choice.”
The end of Big Bang Theory in 2019 also freed him up to take on different roles – the time commitment to a 22-episodes a year TV series didn’t leave a lot of room in the schedule.
“I had a job and I’m grateful for it, but I’m in a different place right now,” he said.
When Parsons chose to take on Ausiello’s memoirs, the trepidation came from whether not the intimacy he felt to the story could be translated from the page to the screen.
“Could we translate the feeling that I had from reading it?
“I know I was deeply, deeply ready for it. I felt a great connection, partly because this gay relationship in the story has echoes of my own gay relationship, without the tragedy, but I definitely felt a commonality.
“I was so eager to be part of these scenes and this story where two people are connecting on such a deep level and finding the gold in this tragic situation, which is the chance to really as close to the true essence of another person as you can.”
Being open to really dive into the emotionality of the story gave Parsons a transformative experience. He said it felt as if he and co-star Ben Aldridge (who plays Kit) went on a journey parallel to what Michael and Kit did – and again, without the tragedy.
At the core of it is this idea of gratitude, of being gifted the chance to be part of something, to be part of someone else’s story, of deeply connecting to another person.
“I knew I was different to when I started the project. I felt something shift in me, and I didn’t realise how excited I would be for that.
“I got into therapy for the first time in my life afterwards. Nothing was ‘wrong’ but it was more because it was rewarding. I thought, ‘I want to keep this energy going, whatever this is, and what’s behind door number three that I’d never even known was there before’.
“Every actor says, ‘I don’t do acting for therapy’ so I’ll give the company line, but there is something therapeutic in any act of participating in art and creation, or even the act of gardening or making dinner.
“If you set your intention to really enjoy it and be there for it, there is the opportunity to grow and change from it.”
Spoiler Alert is in cinemas from Thursday