SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “Guilt Boots” and “Big Decisions,” the two-part Season 1 finale of CBS’ “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.”

Emily Osment has become a staple in Chuck Lorre’s TV universe. After guest-starring on his CBS series “Two and a Half Men” and “Mom,” Osment recurred on “The Kominsky Method,” which ran for three seasons on Netflix. In 2022, she was offered a one-time guest spot on CBS’ “Young Sheldon,” the hit “Big Bang Theory” prequel, then in its fifth season.

“I’m a huge fan of Annie Potts, and went in and had a couple really fun days,” Osment tells Variety. “The next week, they called me back and wanted to have me come back in, and then I kept getting that call. I did two full seasons with them after that. It was the greatest decision of my life to be like, ‘Yeah, sure! I’ll come do a couple days on this sweet little show.’ It’s completely changed my life.”

The character Osment played was Mandy McAlister, a 29-year-old former local news weather girl who had a brief fling with protagonist Sheldon’s 17-year-old brother Georgie (Montana Jordan) — who had lied about his age — which resulted in her becoming pregnant. Despite Mandy’s insistence on raising the child alone, Georgie decided to propose to Mandy, transforming their mutual attraction into an actual relationship. On the same day that they learned that “Young Sheldon” would be ending after seven seasons, Osment and Jordan were informed that they would be leading a new 1994-set spinoff fittingly titled “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage.” (In “Big Bang Theory,” Georgie was revealed to have been married at least twice before.)

Replacing “Young Sheldon” as the No. 1 broadcast comedy of the season, “Georgie & Mandy’s” follows the titular couple — who have since moved in with her parents Audrey (Rachel Bay Jones) and Jim (Will Sasso), and younger brother Connor (Dougie Baldwin) — as they navigate the challenges of marriage and parenthood in Texas.

“In some ways, we’ve watched these characters grow up together,” Osment says. “They’ve been handed a lot of big stuff that I think they’re doing really well at handling, but it’s a lot. These are two young people raising a kid together. They didn’t really know each other well, and now we get to see what their relationship is like.”

In the two-part season finale, Georgie joins forces with his co-worker Ruben (Jessie Prez) to buy the family auto service business owned by Jim, who is looking to retire. Meanwhile, Mandy reluctantly comes clean to Georgie about working for her ex-boyfriend Scott (Christopher Gorham), who has just given her the promotion she has always wanted to anchor the local news desk. In the end, the newlyweds realize that they need to learn to trust each other — but there is certainly a chance that Mandy’s relationship with Scott could spell trouble for her future with her baby’s father.

While insisting that she has no idea what will happen in Season 2, which will premiere this fall, Osment says she is most looking forward to Georgie and Mandy “trying to manage both doing well in their career independently, and also trying to make space for each other — and dealing with the fact that he wants more kids and she doesn’t. There’s a lot of conflict to look forward to, and conflict is funny.”

Calling from her home in Laurel Canyon, Osment opens up about her major takeaways from the show’s central marriage, her working relationship with Lorre — and how she navigated fame after breaking out as a teen on Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana.”

What stands out to you about the development of Mandy’s arc in this first season?

I’m really happy that she’s back to work. I think that’s something that’s really relatable with a lot of young moms. I have a girlfriend right now who has a three-year-old and is just now going back to work. Watching her do that transition is hard, but it’s also just what women do — we do everything. I think that’s captured really well because she does want her independence; she does want to work. She also wants to be a mom and a wife and all that other stuff. There’s just not one path. She’s gotta have them all, and I really like that.

The writers have clearly tried to mine realistic marital conflict from Mandy’s return to the workforce. What do you find most compelling about the exploration of marriage, which is quite literally the lifeblood of this show?

I think my favorite part about the marriage between these two people is they genuinely really like each other. I mean, they love each other, but they really like each other too. I love the way that they fight, and I love that they say exactly how they’re feeling and what they mean, and they usually get to the bottom of an argument quicker that way.

I am always interested to see Georgie’s transformation as well, because his character on the show has been through a lot — he lost his dad, he’s now running the tire shop, he’s got a baby, he wants another baby, he’s becoming a man. It’s also very synonymous with Montana himself, who has a baby and is getting married this summer. I’m watching this other person become a man too, so I think it’s easy for them to pull from his life and for him to play that role because it’s him.

There isn’t necessarily a generational difference between Georgie and Mandy, but there is a significant enough age gap that they have a tendency to see the world differently.

That specific age gap with the woman being 11 or 12 years older than him and the man being younger is actually not something you see all that much. It’s usually the other way around, so I love that take, and I think it provides a lot of humor. The gap is feeling smaller as we grow with these characters, because they’re both growing up and they both ultimately want the same thing. But it provides a lot of comedy stuff that he just hasn’t experienced yet. We’re always joking about, “Well, he can’t even have a legal drink, but he’s got a baby!”

The title of this show cleverly stresses that this is their first marriage. Do you think Georgie and Mandy are endgame, or do you think they will reach some kind of breaking point in their union at some point down the line?

I think definitely there’s a breaking point for them somewhere down the line, but maybe we haven’t considered that if they do split up their first marriage, their second marriage could still also be the two of them. They could get back together and get remarried again. I think that’s what I’m hoping for.

This is your fifth collaboration with the ever-so-prolific Chuck Lorre. What stands out to you about him as a collaborator?

I just have the biggest smile on my face thinking about Chuck. This is my fifth show with him, and I think what’s also cool is just thinking about what those shows were. A lot of them were multi-cam, but two of them were single-cam, and the fact that he’s been able to bounce back and forth between those two mediums and do them so well is really incredible. I love the way that he writes; I love the way that he works.

He promotes such a great community on set, and he hires people that he knows and trusts, because once you get into his world, he wants to keep you and bring you to all the other stuff. He’s given me such wonderful opportunities. I’ve worked with Allison Janney, Alan Akin and Michael Douglas. I cannot believe my luck, and it’s been such a joy getting to know him and all of his people that make all these beautiful shows.

What do you find most appealing about the way he writes female characters in particular?

I think he writes from a really genuine, organic, authentic, human place, and that’s so important with comedy because you’re writing for the joke usually, and sometimes it’s not funny. He doesn’t write to make it funny. He writes real life, which is just funny. I think why this comedy works so well is because you can turn on the TV and watch the show, and it looks like your life. Life’s hysterical, and I think he does a really good job of capturing intimate relationships with family members too. The way that he writes Mandy and her mom is just the funniest thing. I think their relationship is so funny, and I know a lot of mother-daughter relationships like that. It’s so real, and it’s very fun to play with every Tuesday night.

Have you had any conversations with Chuck or the rest of his creative team about how you’d like Mandy’s story to evolve?

No, that’s just not how they work. The new script for the next episode comes in usually eight hours before we have to go back in and do (the previous one). Montana and I have been trying to pitch Dolly Parton to be on the show for a year now, but they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do and we trust it and know it’s going to be great. There really isn’t room or need for us to jump in and be like, “Hey, I have an idea,” because whatever our idea is, they’ve thought about it and they’ve got 20 more that are much better than ours. It’s such a tight writers’ room over there, and they’re really good. I’m always genuinely surprised and so happy to see where these characters are going.

You transitioned from a single-cam on “Young Sheldon” to a multi-cam on “Georgie & Mandy’s” — which is a format that you have come to know quite well in your career. Why do you prefer multi-cams over single-cams?

Multi-cam is just a completely different beast. It’s a different schedule. It’s a different way of even learning the material. I love multi-cam because it feels like a little play every week, and we get to have a lot more rehearsal than you do with single-cam. With single-cam, you get there on the day, you go through your hair and makeup, and then you do maybe a blocking rehearsal, and then you’re shooting. But with multi-cam, you have three days of just figuring it out, figuring out what’s funny, knowing it really well to the point where you can do it live. It is my preferred way to work, and you have such a huge connection with the people that you’re working with because it’s the same people every week. With single-cam, maybe you’re coming in for a couple of days or you’re on location, and you don’t see the whole cast all the time. On Wednesday morning at 10 o’clock, I’m seeing everybody after the show (from) the night before, and then we do it all again. It feels like a community — and I love that.

You began your multi-cam legacy on “Hannah Montana,” which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. Do you have any theories about why that show has continued to remain part of the cultural zeitgeist?

Yeah, it was a great show. It was a funny show, and it was an idea and a story that we hadn’t really seen yet. A pop star leaving a double life is a very interesting thing, and they just crushed that, and people just ate it up.

What kind of relationship, if any, do you still have with the character of Lilly Truscott and “Hannah Montana” in general? What do you see when you revisit old photos or videos from that chapter of your career?

That’s a good question. It’s just so far away because it was a very long time ago, and when I think about that show, I really just think about me being in high school. It was the exact years that I was in high school, so I have a lot of memories tied to that show that are actually just memories from my life. I remember Season 2 because I was going to homecoming at my school, and it was an interesting time to be on the largest show in the world because I was also just a teenager going through high school. So when I think back on it, I think about growing up and going to school. It’s not so much about the show. It was really fun, but it was so long ago that it does kind of feel like a different person.

Actually, I was just talking to my dad about this yesterday. My parents lost their home in the Altadena wildfire, and with the loss of their home, they lost absolutely every piece of memorabilia from any piece of work my brother and I have ever done in our entire lives. We lost every script, every DVD, every chair back, every picture, everything — so there is a lot of that memory that’s kind of gone now. So it is weird to look back and be like, “Oh, yeah. I don’t even really have anything from that anymore now.”

Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear that.

No, it’s OK. But it’s also like, “You know what? I don’t know if I need it.” It was a long time ago, but I do remember it so well, and that’s kind of all I need. Those are my own personal memories of it.

A lot has been said over the years about the difficult yet inevitable transition from child star to adult entertainer. You and your brother, Haley Joel Osment, have worked in the industry and navigated intense scrutiny from an early age, but how do you think you were able to avoid the so-called child-actor curse?

I don’t know. I think it would be unfair to compare my journey with anybody else’s because it’s mine. But I think one thing that really aided me was that when I ended up going to college, I stayed in Los Angeles to go to school, and I was still able to work while I was in college. I think sometimes when you take a large break, it’s hard for you to get back in, and I never really stopped. I actually ended up leaving college, because I was working to the point where I couldn’t sustain both, so I think just always working, or wanting to work, was the thing that kept me in it. And even going to school for theater — I was a theater major in college — it’s the thing that I love to do, and I never wanted to be away from it.

How differently do you think you experienced child stardom compared to your brother?

Well, I’m a woman, so that’s No. 1. The industry’s way harder on a woman. There are way higher expectations, harsher in every way. I think it’s why I actually have so many female friends in the industry, because we all see that and have been there for each other through that because it’s unfair. Forget the pay threshold — just the way women are talked about in the industry is awful, and we’re trying to shift that. I think Gen Z’s doing a good job of being inclusive and trying to set some better boundaries and standards for everything. I hope that continues, and I hope it gets better because it’s been rough out here for us. But I saw something the other day that said that Nicole Kidman only wants to work with female directors now, and everybody was like, “Oh, it’s going to be impossible.” She’s worked with 11 female directors just in the past year. Women are here, we are standing up for ourselves, and we will do whatever we want. But yeah, it’s just a completely different experience.

Is there anything that you haven’t been able to accomplish yet that you still really want to do?

I’d love to direct one day. I think I’d be good at it because I’ve seen it so much. I’d love to direct a multi-cam. It’s a world that I know very well, and I think that would be a fun goal for myself to hopefully do at some point.

Have you asked Chuck about directing one of his shows?

Oh, not yet! We gotta wait. I mean, it’s only been 18 years that I’ve known him, but maybe we’ll wait a couple more years, and we’ll broach that. One of my first episodes on “Young Sheldon” was directed by Jason Alexander, and I thought that was so cool. He’s been a staple on our TVs for decades, and having him come in and direct you, he’s such an actor’s director because of that. He was fabulous.

This interview has been edited and condensed.