Jaime Pressly Defends Mom Co-Stars After Chuck Lorre Memoir Remarks

Jaime Pressly has spoken up for her former Mom co-stars, describing them as “an incredible cast of women” after series creator Chuck Lorre revisited his casting of Anna Faris. She kept it brief. The message was clear.

Pressly made the remarks to E! News, where she discussed her time on the CBS sitcom in an exclusive interview, as reported by Deadline. She said she recognised how much the ensemble had carried the programme through storylines centred on addiction and recovery. A sitcom, short for situational comedy, tells its story in half-hour episodes with a recurring cast.

Pressly played Jill Kendall, a recovering addict with sharp edges and a soft centre. She joined in the second season and stayed for seven years. The comedy ran for eight seasons in total.

Lorre created Mom and oversaw its run on network television, meaning free-to-air TV funded largely by advertising. He has now published a memoir, Sitcom, a book about his own working life. In it, he wrote that his early reluctance to cast Faris as Christy Plunkett was “in fact, correct”.

He also linked those doubts to her later departure from the series, as reported by E! News. That passage is the reason for the current response. It reopened a casting decision made more than a decade ago.

Faris starred as Christy Plunkett for the first seven seasons after Mom premiered in 2013. She left in 2020 to pursue new opportunities. Allison Janney then led the eighth and final season on her own, which ended in 2021.

Faris answered the memoir comments on Instagram. She said she felt hurt. She also said she felt grateful for seven years on the show.

Beyond Faris and Janney, the core group included Mimi Kennedy, Beth Hall, Kristen Johnston and Pressly as friends connected through Alcoholics Anonymous. Their meetings anchored many episodes. Their friendships drove much of the humour.

For viewers who watched week to week, this is about more than a memoir passage. It is about a long-running workplace finding its voice again. Pressly spent seven years in that room. She is using her turn to speak.

What makes this stand out is the timeline. The show ended in 2021. Five years on, its cast is still explaining what those years meant.