Jaime Pressly Defends 'Mom' Cast as 'Beautifully Flawed'

Jaime Pressly spent seven seasons on the CBS sitcom "Mom," and she says the women on that set were "just as beautifully flawed as our characters on the show were." Her comments, made to E! News, are the latest reply to co-creator Chuck Lorre, who wrote in his new memoir "Sitcom" that his early doubts about casting Anna Faris proved right.

Pressly joined "Mom" in its second season as Jill Kendall, a recovering addict, and stayed through the series' end. She pushed back on the portrait Lorre's book paints of the production.

What did Pressly actually say?

"I was there for seven years, but there [were] eight seasons," Pressly 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."

She added: "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."

Note what Pressly did not do. She did not name Lorre. She did not address Faris's departure directly. Her defense is aimed at the cast as a whole, not at the specific claim in the memoir — a gap worth keeping in mind when reading the headline framing.

What did Lorre write?

In "Sitcom," Lorre described his hesitation about casting Faris as Christy Plunkett, the show's lead.

"I wasn't sure Anna would be appropriate for this kind of material," Lorre wrote. "Then I thought about how badly I'd bungled my working relationship with Charlie Sheen."

That reference is loaded. Lorre and Sheen had a public feud near the end of "Two and a Half Men" that ended with Sheen's firing in 2011. Lorre cited that history as the reason he hired Faris anyway.

Then came the harder line. "As the years went by, it became apparent that my initial reluctance to hire Anna was, in fact, correct," Lorre wrote. "After six years, she left the show for mysterious reasons that were not mysterious to anyone on the show."

He offers no specifics beyond that sentence. The memoir names no incident, no conflict, no diagnosis. Readers are left to weigh an insinuation against Faris's own account.

How did Faris respond?

Faris left "Mom" in 2020, before its final season, saying at the time that she wanted to open herself up to other opportunities. She answered Lorre on Instagram on Oct. 15.

"Of course it hurts. Chuck gave me a job I loved, and for seven years I never took a day of it for granted," Faris wrote. "I'm proud of what we made together, and nothing changes how grateful I am for those people and those years."

She also disclosed a personal milestone: "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."

That admission is the most concrete fact in the exchange. It also reframes the memoir's vague "mysterious reasons" — though, again, neither party has confirmed any direct link between sobriety and the exit.

What changes for the 'Mom' legacy?

After Faris left, Pressly carried the final season as the main lead, alongside Allison Janney, Mimi Kennedy, Beth Hall and Kristen Johnston. The show ran eight seasons in total and centered on women in addiction recovery — a premise its stars now say they lived off-camera as well as on.

What does this change for the people involved? For Lorre, the memoir puts his casting judgments on the record without evidence to settle them. For Faris and Pressly, it offers a platform to reframe the show around its ensemble rather than its behind-the-scenes rupture. The fuller account of why Faris left remains, for now, untold.