Anna Faris has broken her silence on Chuck Lorre’s claim that he was ‘correct’ to feel reluctance’ over casting her on ‘Mom,’ saying, ‘Of course it hurts’ on social media. ‘I’m proud of what we made together.’

Anna Faris has broken her silence on Chuck Lorre’s claim that he was ‘correct’ to feel reluctance’ over casting her on ‘Mom,’ saying, ‘Of course it hurts’ on social media.
‘I’m proud of what we made together.’

Anna Faris stands behind her work on Mom.

Earlier this week, the CBS comedy’s creator, Chuck Lorre, published the aptly titled memoir Sitcom. Amid bombshell claims about the network’s resistance to casting Melissa McCarthy on Mike & Molly and writers on Roseanne being forced to add Tom Arnold’s name to scripts he didn’t write, Lorre shared his surprising perspective regarding Faris’ casting as the show’s titular mother, the recovering addict Christy Plunkett.

Lorre wrote that he “initially said no” to Faris, an instinct that was proven “correct” after she left the show following its seventh and penultimate season.

On Thursday, Faris took to social media to share her response to Lorre’s comments, setting the tone unambiguously with her very first word: “Yikes.”

Yes, I read a few things. I really didn’t see that coming. Of course it hurts,” Faris wrote in a text post shared to 2.2 million Instagram followers, presented without a caption. “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.”

Faris continued, “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. If anyone reading this is where I was, I hope that’s useful. It gets better. I’m proof.”

In the full passage from Sitcom, Lorre wrote, “A pilot script came together relatively quickly and was sent to [casting director] Nikki Valko. She responded with an email that simply said, ‘Anna Faris.’ I initially said no. 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. I called Nikki and said I’d changed my mind. Someone’s personal life is none of my business. The mom in Mom would be, and should be, Anna Faris.”

Then, 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.”

Faris announced she was leaving Mom in 2020, specifically thanking “Chuck, the writers, and my amazing castmates for creating a truly wonderful work experience.”

Speaking with Chelsea Handler in August, Faris opened up about her decision to leave. “I didn’t know what my ambition [was],” she noted. “I was, in hindsight, I think pretty depressed, like, premenopausal depression without recognizing it.” She also pointed to “a correlation between drinking and depression for me… I had to take a step back and not self-sabotage.”

Lorre told a version of the same story about his casting process with Valko in 2013. “When we sent her the script in December, she emailed me a response that had two words on it, and they were ‘Anna Faris,’” he said at the time (per Collider). “There was no list. That was it. She read the script, and she came right back with that, We’ve been very fortunate to have a great casting director who’s guided us through this process.”