As She Approaches 70, Annie Potts Is Done Playing by Anyone Else’s Rules

Annie Potts may not realize it, but a chat with her is like reading Chicken Soup for the Soul. In her almost 70 years on earth, she’s picked up enough life lessons to turn into several self-help books and doesn’t mind sharing her wisdom. Not in a demanding “Honey, you need to do this” way, but with the kind of soft-spoken insights that creep up on you later, when you realize the gift you’ve been given.

On this particular morning the actor, best known for playing Mary Jo Shively in Designing Women, an ’80s sitcom too ahead of its time, is Zooming with me from her home in Los Angeles when I comment that we’ve both embraced the pinstripe shirt. “I’ve got 10,000 stripes going on,” she says with a laugh. “I now believe in a design theory that says everything goes with everything and it doesn’t really matter. I like it.” Born in Nashville and raised in Kentucky, the Stephens College grad says acting was the only thing she wanted to do growing up. “There was no plan B. Nothing. I have no other skills. Luckily that worked out.”

If Potts were to write a memoir, a fitting title would be That Worked Out, especially when it comes to her latest role as Meemaw, Sheldon’s spitfire grandmother in The Big Bang Theory’s prequel series, Young Sheldon. Potts has had a long career, but she says it’s this series that’s perhaps changed her life the most. In 2016, a year before Young Sheldon premiered, Potts was in “a bit of a career slump,” something women over the age of 60 not named Streep, Dench, Mirren, or Baranski are all too familiar with. And so, a couple of years after her husband, James “Jim” Hayman, was asked to produce and direct NCIS: New Orleans, Potts decided to permanently join him in Louisiana.

“Once the show became a hit and all of our children were out of the house, I was like, ‘I’m living in a big house all by myself. This is stupid,’” Potts says. “So I decided I’d just move down there. I didn’t have a lot of reasons to stay in Los Angeles. Because, honestly, women in their 60s—not a lot of roles.”

But the smart decision doesn’t always translate to feeling like the right decision, at least initially. “My husband was working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and I barely saw him,” Potts says. “I felt super isolated. I really missed L.A.” Little by little, she found a group of friends and a sense of belonging. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I like New Orleans. This is different, this is good.’”

And then producer Chuck Lorre called. “As fate would have it, all you have to do is make a plan, sell your house, and move across the country for the gods to go, ‘No, no. Come back,’” Potts says with a laugh. A year after uprooting her life and moving to New Orleans, she headed back to Los Angeles. “I think for some reason I needed to be willing to leave everything that was familiar to me,” she says of the moves.

The pilot for Young Sheldon had already been filmed by the time Potts came on board, but after watching the first three minutes, the veteran actor knew she wanted to be a part of it. “It turned out to be a pretty good decision,” she says nonchalantly.

A good decision indeed. Potts moved back to L.A., and eventually her husband did too. Young Sheldon is renewed for another two seasons after season five is over, and Potts is having the time of her life working on the ensemble show. “Everybody’s just happy to be there,” she says.

So, ahead of the 100th episode and Potts’s monumental birthday in October, she fills us in on her prolific career, her iconic roles, and the lessons she’s learned about love and life along the way.