“Young Sheldon” star Iain Armitage’s first acting role on TV was not as the precocious brainiac protagonist of “The Big Bang Theory” prequel but as a kidnapping victim. In 2017, Armitage guest-starred in a season 18 episode of “Law & Order: SVU.”
Armitage was 8 years old when the episode, “Chasing Theo,” premiered on NBC. He played the title character, a 6-year-old boy who goes missing after his mother (Rachelle Lefevre) leaves him alone in their apartment for the night to go to a party. As Mariska Hargitay’s Lieutenant Olivia Benson and the rest of the SVU squad investigate the disappearance, they start to suspect that Theo’s nanny (Adriana DeGirolami) might have been the culprit — but they also wonder if perhaps she was acting in the boy’s best interests given his home life. Armitage is understandably MIA for most of his acting debut, but he’s memorable in his scenes at the beginning and end of the episode.
Armitage’s “SVU” episode aired on January 11, 2017, kicking off a big year for the child actor. He appeared in two TV shows later that year, playing Shailene Woodley’s son in HBO’s “Big Little Lies” and, of course, playing young Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” spin-off. He also appeared in three movies, “The Glass Castle,” “Our Souls at Night,” and “I’m Not Here.” In retrospect, his appearance was one of the more notable “Law & Order” guest stars.
This wasn’t the first time Iain Armitage had been on the set of SVU
While “Chasing Theo” was Iain Armitage’s acting debut (and by extension his “Law & Order” debut, too), it was not the first time that the actor had bumped elbows with Mariska Hargitay on the “SVU” set. Armitage’s official Facebook page posted an undated #TBT to a time when Armitage visited the set of the long-running procedural, pretending to be a witness on the stand and hanging out with Hargitay and Rafael Barba actor Raúl Esparza.
Armitage and Esparza have a connection, it turns out. Armitage’s father is Scottish stage actor Euan Morton. Morton and Esparza starred in the Broadway production of “Taboo” together in 2003. Esparza is one of Armitage’s godfathers, and when Armitage was a kid, he called Esparza “Pumpkin.” The “SVU” episode is the only time godson and godfather have acted together on the screen, though they were both a part of the 2020 virtual concert “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration,” which Esparza hosted.