ALLISON & ANNA
As their hit CBS sitcom, Mom, approaches a milestone, co-stars Allison Janney and Anna Faris talk about strong women, pranks, figure skating and friendship. •
On Mom, Allison Janney and Anna Faris co-star as a mother and her grown daughter. But their relationship—on the show and in real life—is something different.
“Anna’s a bit of a camp counselor at work; she really likes to organize the group,” says Janney of her co-star. But what surprised her most when she met Faris (whose first name, by the way, is pronounced with an “ah” sound, as in “Donna”) is “what an instigator she is.” Janney laughs. “She’s a prankster.”
Both women play recovering drug and alcohol addicts on Mom. Faris, 41, is Christy Plunkett, who restarted her life in Napa, Calif., with her daughter, Violet (Sadie Calvano), and son, Roscoe (Blake Garrett Rosenthal). Janney, 58, plays her mother, Bonnie, who hasn’t been much of a mother figure and wants to make up for lost time. The half-hour show—now in its fifth season and about to celebrate its major-milestone 100th episode on Thursday, Feb. 1—has a strong female cast that also includes Mimi Kennedy, Jaime Pressly and Beth Hall as the main characters’ friends and fellow AA members.
“It’s not just the story of women, it’s the story of people going through their journeys, and that feels incredibly unique,” Faris says. “Especially when not all of the storylines are centered around a love interest.”
When Faris was cast in the show, which premiered in 2013, Janney couldn’t wait to meet her co-star. She recalls how she loved Faris in The House Bunny and had seen Scary
Movie 1, 2, 3 and 4. “Not 5,” says Faris dryly of the final film in the horror-spoof series.
“I was so intimidated by you,” she says to Janney, whose award-winning résumé spans TV ’s The West Wing and Masters of Sex and dozens of hit movies, including The
Help, Hairspray, Juno and The Girl on the Train. “You had sort of this, like, intellectual sophistication, but also mischievousness.”
They’re sitting beside each other on a big couch in a greenroom on the set of their CBS comedy in Burbank, Calif.—Faris in jeans, Uggs and a sweatshirt and Janney barefoot, in jeans and a sweater. They both laugh, a lot. “We’re a little rascally!” says Faris.
STRONG ROLE MODELS
Faris was born in Baltimore and raised, with her older brother, Robert, in Edmonds, Wash. Her mother, Karen, worked at Faris’ elementary school. Her father, Jack, a professor of sociology, also ran an advertising agency in Seattle and worked for the Bill Gates Foundation. (Her brother is also a sociologist.) Her mother always encouraged her imagination. “Like, she would pretend to be somebody evil, or like a great chef,” says Faris, who now embraces those same games with her own son, Jack, 5, with actor Chris Pratt (Guardians of the
Galaxy, Parks and Recreation). The couple split this past August after eight years of marriage.
She says her mother “is crazy loyal—truly ferocious. I think that scared some boyfriends. I mean, not that I had boyfriends.” She laughs, adding that her mom always instilled in her, “‘You will never be dependent on a man.’ ”
Janney was raised in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio, the middle child with two brothers. Her mother, Macy, is a former actress who went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Her father, Jervis, ran a family hydraulics company and worked in commercial real estate. He was also a jazz musician and an artist. Janney’s older brother, Jay, is a musician. Her younger brother, Hal, died by suicide in 2011 after struggling for years with addiction and other issues.
Janney says her mother “decided to forgo an acting career and get married and have kids instead—back when it’s what women did.” Her mom became “the doyenne of Dayton, Ohio,” Janney says. She was on the boards of multiple performance, arts and education programs. Along with a strong feminist stance, Janney also inherited her mother’s organizational genes. “I like to plan!” she says. “I start thinking about the napkin rings, or I start thinking, We’re gonna
need 26 plates…” It’s in those moments, she says, that everybody tells her, “‘You sound just like Macy—just like your mom.’ ”
Faris was enticed by acting at a young age, performing onstage before she was 10 and booking her first commercial in high school. In Hollywood, she found her footing playing campy comedic roles in films like
Lost in Translation and Just Friends. But she cemented her place in comedy with 2008’s
The House Bunny, a film she pitched around Hollywood endless times—in costume as the title character, she says—before getting the green light.
“We kept hearing that it was a great pitch,” she says of the movie about a former Playboy bunny who—after getting kicked out of the mansion—finds a job as the house mother for a sorority of socially awkward girls. “But I don’t think at the time people wanted to invest in a femaledriven comedy.” Adam Sandler’s company finally bought the rights to the film, “and five weeks later,” says Faris, she was at a gym with a trainer to get ready for the midriff-baring role.
SKATING TO SUCCESS
Janney had another love before acting: “I used to be a figure skater,” she says. “It was what I wanted to do before I ever wanted to be an actress.” She was later mentored onstage by Paul Newman when he directed a play at her college, and she participated in summer programs at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which eventually led her to roles in films like The
Ice Storm and The Hours, and she went on to earn two Tony nominations and seven Emmy awards for her stage and TV
WE’RE A LITTLE RASCALLY! — Anna Faris
work. But comedy—like she’s doing now—has always been close to her heart.
“I grew up in love with Carol Burnett,” says Janney. “I love comedy—love, love, love it. I will always look for something funny to do in a drama.” While playing press secretary C.J. Cregg for seven seasons of The West
Wing, she appreciated the silly, comic moments, like when she got to pardon a turkey or fall off a treadmill.
In real life, Janney says, “having a political conversation or dressing down a four-star general is not something I would feel comfortable doing, so to step into that character and have [creator/writer] Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant words to say, to dress somebody down with the most articulate argument? It is the most powerful feeling, because my mind doesn’t work like that!”
It was, in a way, a similar strength of character that drew Janney to the part of Bonnie in
Mom. “I admire her,” says Janney, “because she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her. Which is so opposite of me. I’m a huge critic of myself.”
Both Janney and Faris live in L.A., but they spend their downtime differently. Faris looks forward to every second she can get with her young son. In fact, when he shows up at Parade’s photo shoot, she squeals and calls him onto the set. “Hi, bud!” she says, squatting down for a big hug.
On days off, they go to a nearby train museum and she plays imaginary games, just as her own mother did with her. Sometimes Jack will heave fake sobs in front of her, then “look up at me with this sly grin, and I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve manufactured this and you have tears— and you’re better at it than I am!’” (She is now said to be dating Michael Barrett, the cinematographer on her film Overboard, due out this spring.)
TELLING HER STORY
Faris has spent much of this year on tour promoting her memoir, Unqualified, released in October, and hosting her funny-advice podcast, Anna
Faris Is Unqualified, which she started “as a weird hobby” with her producing partner, Sim Sarna, in 2015. She and Sarna are also adjunct lecturers at the University of Southern California, walking students through the growing medium to make pilots of their own podcast projects.
“I’ve worked hard to be independent, so the podcast has given me a lot of freedom,” she says. “I enjoy creating my own content and feeling like I’m not waiting for the next
role to come around.”
When Janney has time to herself, she’ll take her three dogs for a long walk, then pick a recipe from a cooking magazine. “I go to the store and get the food, cook all day and then have my niece and nephew over, and we binge-watch TV or watch a movie with the dogs on the couch. That’s my idea of a day off.”
“When I call you,” says Faris, “you are always in the bath.”
“I do take a lot of baths,” admits Janney, who is certainly soaking in all the Academy Award buzz for her role in the film I, Tonya, based on the story of figure skater Tonya Harding (played by Margot Robbie), infamously a party to the 1994 attack that sidelined her biggest Olympic rival, Nancy Kerrigan. Janney plays Harding’s mother, LaVona Golden.
And while Janney didn’t know Harding or Kerrigan personally from her skating days, “I was floored that this sort of thing would happen in the world of figure skating—a very refined, elegant sport that was rocked by this crazy incident.”
Faris, listening to Janney talk about the film, is now itching to say something. She turns to Janney and sits up. “I was just gonna say if we have a falling out, and you’re walking onto a stage, and somebody takes a little tool to your knee—it won’t be me, OK?”
Janney laughs, knowing her co-star, prankster and playful instigator so well after five years. Besides, adds Faris, “when you’re at the Oscars that night, I’m gonna break into your house and steal a few of your Emmys.”