Jaime Pressly has stepped into the row over Chuck Lorre’s new memoir, defending her “Mom” co-stars as “an incredible cast of women” after the producer revisited his doubts about casting Anna Faris.
Pressly, who played Jill Kendall on the CBS sitcom, told E! News she spent seven years on the show, which ran eight seasons, after joining in season two. She said the cast and crew gave her seven wonderful years, and that the women around her were “just as beautifully flawed as our characters.” She did not mention Lorre by name.
The comments follow an excerpt from Lorre’s memoir “Sitcom,” in which he writes that he hesitated to cast Faris as Christy Plunkett, the recovering addict at the center of the series, and that his instincts proved correct. He recalls doubting she suited the material, then thinking of how badly he handled his working relationship with Charlie Sheen on “Two and a Half Men.” That experience, he writes, taught him that an actor’s personal life was none of his business, and he decided the lead should be Faris.
Faris answered on Instagram Thursday. She said she was hurt by the remarks, wrote “Yikes,” and insisted she never took a day on the show for granted. She left the series after its fifth season. Allison Janney remained its anchor through the finale in 2021.
Lorre has defended the book’s candor in interviews promoting it. In a conversation with Deadline, he discussed the care and feeding of sitcom stars. The memoir praises performers such as Jim Parsons, Melissa McCarthy and Allison Janney for handling fame well, while spending much of its energy on difficult stars who made life hard for colleagues. Lorre has not responded publicly to Faris or Pressly.
The exchange pits a prolific producer’s account of his own judgment against the actress he hired, with her former castmates now entering the conversation. “Mom” aired 170 episodes between 2013 and 2021 and drew praise for its portrayal of addiction and recovery.
