If you recognized one of the moms who commiserated with Emily Osment's Mandy in the midseason premiere of "Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage," you're not seeing things. The eighth episode of the latest "Big Bang Theory" spinoff featured a guest appearance from Melissa Tang, one of a handful of actors who has appeared in more than one role across the "Big Bang" universe.
Tang showed up in a recent episode of "Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage" as Jackie, a woman who made Mandy feel better after her attempt at taking on a sales job was overshadowed by her husband, Georgie (Montana Jordan). After hitting it off with the other moms at the pediatrician's office, Mandy ends up on a hot streak, using banter about the annoyances of work and marriage as a gateway to selling more nutrition products. Before Tang played Jackie, though, she showed up in both "Young Sheldon" and "The Big Bang Theory," making her the only actor we know of (a claim also reported by ScreenRant) to have played a different character across all three Sheldon Cooper-adjacent sitcoms.
Before her recent appearance as Jackie, Tang played music teacher Ms. Fenley in a couple episodes of "Young Sheldon," including the show's pilot. She's responsible for a "Sliding Doors"-style moment in which Sheldon is offered encouragement to go down a totally different path -- one that could lead to him becoming a musician instead of a theoretical physicist. On his first day of high school, Sheldon (Iain Armitage) hears Ms. Fenley playing Mozart's "Piano Sonata No. 11" on cello and joins in on the piano without giving it much thought. When she questions him, Sheldon admits that he's never played piano before, and a quick pitch test reveals he has an off-the-charts aptitude for music. Of course, Sheldon being Sheldon, he shuts down her encouragement to pursue it, saying simply: "No thank you. Musicians take drugs."