Anna Faris and Allison Janney talk about Mom

Mom follows Christy Plunkett (Anna Faris), a single mother who, after dealing with her battle with alcoholism and drug abuse, decides to restart her life in Sonoma, California, working as a waitress and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Now sober, she tries to regain the trust of her children. Her daughter, Violet (Sadie Calvano), who is 17 years old. As if that isn’t enough, she is also trying to iron out the rough edges in her relationship with her mother, Bonnie (Allison Janney) who is also a recovering drug and alcohol addict.

As the sitcom progresses, themes of real-life issues such as alcoholism, teen pregnancy, cancer, gambling addiction, domestic violence, drug addiction are dealt with in a humorous yet serious manner . lets know more from interview of Anna Faris and Allison Janney, the lead characters of the show.

QUESTION: Hi. As you had said, you'd played a lot of characters who were very funny, but maybe not tremendously bright. Were you actively looking to play somebody who had sort of a normal IQ and a normal perspective and was funny not because she's not?

ANNA FARIS: It's a funny something strange happens. Playing those one dimensional characters is actually really difficult and because you're not dealing with somebody you would ever really know. I don't think anybody here sort of could imagine actually knowing Cindy Campbell from "Scary Movies.” So in a way, your job is so much easier when you're playing a person that you really understand, that seems very relatable. So I guess, yeah, I was I think I was coming to a place in my career where I was like, "I'd like to do something a little more rewarding."

QUESTION: Allison, you've played some characters who were kind of restrained and so forth. In "West Wing" at least she always tried to be politically correct and so forth. Now you get a chance to play these big characters. The character you play in "The Way Way Back" is just a huge, over the top kind of a person. And this mom, from what we've seen so far, is quite a big character too. Is this just a lot of fun for you to get to tackle these really huge characters?

ALLISON JANNEY: Oh, I couldn't be happier. I love the messier, the bigger they are, the more they are rooted in some kind of tragic sadness and dysfunction, which I love to discover in characters, to find out what grounds them so that they can be I can go as large as I'd like, and they somehow make sense, and you buy it because of the pain underneath. And I love I don't know why I get to play it, because I am a very well adjusted, happy lady. I'm loving it. I'm having the time of my life.

QUESTION: For Anna and for Allison, obviously the heart of the show is the relationship between you two guys. Can you talk about working together and the challenge of making us believe that, this is an actual mother daughter relationship in terms of idiosyncrasies or relationships or how you drive each other crazy, I guess.

ALLISON JANNEY: Well, we have that mother daughter relationship is everybody. We both have it with our real mothers, and it's sort of one of those relationships that everyone can relate to even everyone's going have a relationship with their mother. So that's how we bring our own relationships with our mothers to this. We find the characters, and they're coming up with backstory for us. We certainly had a very colorful past.

ANNA FARIS: We are hoping for some flashbacks.

ALLISON JANNEY: And some flashbacks, but as far as working together, we are I just

ANNA FARIS: Allison is I feel so honored that she came onto this project because, as you all know, she's such an incredible actress. She's also such an amazing person, and it is truly a joy to work. Chuck knows how to assemble people that, I guess, really sort of get along. We feel very lucky. And yeah no, I think the relationship, mother daughter thing is very, very relatable. She's sort of my biggest champion and my harshest critic and very, very critical of me, just like all moms are.

QUESTION: To embrace the statement of Chuck's that L.A. is the city of second chances, Anna and Allison and anyone else who has a great story, but Anna and Allison, can you tell me about a second chance you were given starting out as an actress, you know, hitting a bump and then getting a second chance, anything that you can tell us about the second handshake that you've gotten.

ANNA FARIS: Well, I think I have a couple of thoughts. I did just slowly come to realize that getting your first job is hard, but it's not nearly as hard as getting your seventh job. That is hard. That's when you really have to sort of, okay, you have to prove it to people. My journey was a little bit interesting because I had never done comedy.

I grew up in Seattle, did theater up there in little, I don't know, industrial films. But came to town, got "Scary Movie" and was sort of I felt that was as incredible as that experience was, it was difficult to reidentify myself as something other than a spoof movie gal. I also feel fortunate that I ended up doing comedy because it's so much fun. I know that's kind of a vague answer, but I think this is you know, you just have to really pedal yourself around town and attempt to not get too discouraged.

QUESTION: Create that second chance?

ANNA FARIS: Yeah, yeah.

ALLISON JANNEY: I feel like I'm given a second chance every time I get another job. Like I go, okay, here I get another chance to, you know, I don't know, whatever it is, this to be back on television again and this time in a comedy. I mean, just every job is a chance, another chance to do it, what I love to do, and, you know, that sounds sappy, but it's kind of true. So this is my second chance at getting a comedy.

ANNA FARIS: And also I think as it's there is a different kind of challenge for women as they graduate into their 30s. And it's hard. Yeah, there's isn't as much work. You're sort of you're suddenly the aunt or something, and so it's a process. And I think that's why we're so fortunate that we get to play such dimensional characters.

QUESTION: In the back, Allison and Anna, will your mothers watch the show? And since you talked about relationships between mothers and daughters, are they going to say, one at a time, each of you, "I'm not like that" or "Where did you get that idea?" or "You're using my lines"? Or what do you expect to hear from your mom?

ALLISON JANNEY: My mother, will be she'll be a little because this is very edgy. This is not just a typical comedy half hour. There is some there's some subject matters that we deal with that and some ways we deal with them, some circumstances that she's my mother will be uncomfortable with.

She will watch it because she has to and she loves me, but she will call me and go, "Well, I just don't know about that." You know, she'll say, "I just don't think" she'll watch it, and she'll love it, but she'll have issues because she's old school.

QUESTION: Subject matter or not, does she talk about your performance?

ALLISON JANNEY: No, she never commented. My mother was an actress too, but she's never commented on my performance. She'll talk about the thing as a whole and if it works or not, but she doesn't ever say, "You really knocked it out of the park."

I know she feels that way, right?

QUESTION: Anna, what will your mother say?

ANNA FARIS: I'm lucky. My mom is also a prude, but I'm lucky because, she really, half the time, has no idea sort of what certain vocabulary is. She told me recently she'd never seen a condom. I don't know. I don't know what that was. I don't know. Sorry. I just threw my mom under the bus.

But she's really supportive. She'll say like, "Oh, you know, you were so good" or whatever, very kind. But she is the very typical mom, and I'll have to tell her, you know, "Mom, you gave me three pieces of advice today. That's all you get. Save it up for tomorrow." And she would never be able to see I don't think the similarities between Bonnie and Christy and how it's like all mother daughter relationships.