After Anna Faris responded to Mom co-creator Chuck Lorre‘s professional criticisms, Jaime Pressly has chimed in.
The actress, who played recovering addict Jill Kendall on the CBS sitcom, defended her co-stars as “an incredible cast of women” after Lorre wrote in his memoir Sitcom that he “was, in fact, right” about his reluctance to cast Anna Faris in the lead as Christy Plunkett.
“I was there for seven years, but there [were] eight seasons,” she told E! News. “I came on in the second season, but I had seven wonderful years of working with an incredible crew and an incredible cast of women, who were, all of us, just as beautifully flawed as our characters on the show were.”
Pressly continued, “And I think I just really thoroughly enjoyed being able to go to work with girlfriends every day. All of us of a certain age, it was nice. It was refreshing.”
Watch on Deadline
In an excerpt from Sitcom, Lorre wrote: “I wasn’t sure Anna would be appropriate for this kind of material. Then I thought about how badly I’d bungled my working relationship with Charlie Sheen.”
After his experience with Sheen on Two and a Half Men, Lorre recalled conceding, “Someone’s personal life is none of my business. The mom in Mom would be, and should be, Anna Faris.”
Lorre added: “As the years went by, it became apparent that my initial reluctance to hire Anna was, in fact, correct. After six years, she left the show for mysterious reasons that were not mysterious to anyone on the show.”
Premiering in 2013, Faris starred in the first seven seasons of Mom as Christy, a recovering alcoholic who struggles to maintain a job, her family and her sobriety as her mom Bonnie (Allison Janney), who’s also in recovery, moves in with her.
Faris left the show in 2020 to “pursue new opportunities,” leaving Janney as the sole lead for the eighth and final season, which ended in 2021.
Following Lorre’s comments, Faris shared her response Thursday on Instagram. “Yikes. Yes, I read a few things. I really didn’t see that coming. Of course it hurts. Chuck gave me a job I loved, and for seven years I never took a day of it for granted. I’m proud of what we made together, and nothing changes how grateful I am for those people and those years,” she wrote.
“I’ve been sober for a year and a half. I was on a show about recovery, and then I lived it. Now I’m healthy, I’m working, and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time,” Faris continued. “If anyone reading this is where I was, I hope that’s useful. It gets better. I’m proof.”
In addition to Faris and Janney, Pressly starred in the series alongside Mimi Kennedy, Beth Hall and Kristen Johnston, playing their supportive group of friends from Alcoholics Anonymous.