How Mom addressed the departure of Anna Faris
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Robert Voets/CBS
Christy is going to Georgetown!
For the eighth season premiere of Mom on CBS, the producers decided to send their lead character off in high style — by giving her a full ride to Georgetown University, where she will study law. It's an organic development for Christy (previously played by Anna Faris) since the sober mom had spent previous seasons dreaming about a career as a lawyer.
Showrunner Gemma Baker needed to come up with a way to say goodbye to Christy, after Faris announced in September that she would not be returning to the comedy. Faris didn't make a final cameo in Thursday's episode; instead, it began with her mom Bonnie (Allison Janney) and her husband Adam (William Fichtner) driving away from the airport, having just dropped Christy off for her flight to Washington, D.C., Bonnie joked about how "every mom dreams of the day they drop their 42-year-old off to go to school."
"It was important to us that Christy moved on to bigger things," Baker told EW. "Quite often when people are in recovery their lives get bigger in ways they couldn’t before have imagined. And so that will be the case for Christy. She has been working toward her dreams for a while now and we feel like the audience will be happy for her. The character of Christy will live on and we will continue to get updates on what she is up to and how her moving on will affect Bonnie."
The rest of the episode focuses on the women from Bonnie's support group, which pretty much sets the tone for future episodes of the show. From here on out, the action will center on the ensemble, which includes Jaime Pressly as Jill, Kristen Johnston as Tammy, Mimi Kennedy as Marjorie, and Beth Hall as Wendy. Even the title sequence has been updated with new shots of the women.
The sitcom launched in 2013 by focusing on Christy, a newly sober single mom with a self-indulgent parent. Much of the comedy came from the interactions between Christy and Bonnie.
"When we first heard Anna was leaving Mom, we were, of course, sad to lose her," Baker told EW. "Anna created such a beautiful character in Christy Plunkett. And we loved writing the mother-daughter dynamics for Christy and Bonnie and watching that relationship deepen and heal over the years. But we never felt a sense of panic because, over the last few seasons, the show has naturally become more about the ensemble. We have such an incredibly strong cast, so we never doubted that we would be able to lean into them. There are so many stories left to tell about these strong women."
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