Monty Brinton/CBSDistraught after watching last week's tragic episode of Mom, in which the young recovering addict taken in by Christy (Anna Faris) and Bonnie (Allison Janney) succumbed to her heroin addiction? So was star Faris' mom, because her daughter forgot to warn her about the ultra-dramatic moment.
E! News chatted with the actress following the bombshell episode, and she admitted she dropped the ball in terms of letting her mother know.
"On a personal level, I should've told my mom that this was going to happen, but I forgot to or something, but she has been really thrown by it and I love her for that," Faris says of her biggest fan. "She had some family friends that have experienced a similar issue and I just love that we get to open a dialogue and I love that we get to touch people in this very current and urgent issue in terms of heroin addiction and opiate addiction."
Mom has always struck a very unique and effective balance between serious moments—this is a show about recovering alcoholics, after all—and comedy—it's a multi-camera sitcom, too—but the death of Jodi (Emily Osment) leaned much more heavily on the somber side of things.
"It's pretty amazing that every week we get to dive into a journey that surprises us and challenges us and is incredibly rewarding," Faris tells us. "Sometimes it's really light and on the sillier side and sometimes it really touches people and we address some incredibly tragic circumstances. I know that last week did and Emily Osment, who played Jodi, she's just a wonderful actress and an incredible person."
Christy, Bonnie and their Alcoholics Anonymous friends were blindsided by the news of Jodi's overdose, and Faris tells us the actors didn't have much time to process it either. "Our writers are just so brilliant, and they are able to make our jobs so much easier for us in terms of managing those levels of laughing through pain," she says—but the actors only get their scripts the week before they film. "So we really don't know what's going to happen, so we all felt the pain of losing Jodi," she says.
Thursday's episode, "Sticky Hands and a Walk on the Wild Side," will see the crew attempt a maple syrup heist (just go with it) as a way to distract themselves from their grief. "We all kind of knew Jodi was vulnerable, but we didn't know how vulnerable," Faris says. They'll spend the half hour working through some of their emotions. "The guilt on all different levels, I love that we address that."
The show will also touch on the fallout from Christy's decision not to tell Marjorie (Mimi Kennedy) the bad news on her wedding day—it's the first time in Marjorie's long relationship as Christy's sponsor that they're fighting.
"She's furious with me, and rightfully so, although I do think that my character was placed in a very difficult position," Faris says. "I don't know that I would do things differently, but I love that we deal with the idea of, 'How do we have this person who is in this moment of happiness?' We don't want to destroy that. I don't know what the right call would have been."
Last season, Bonnie relapsed after her love's death, but Faris says Christy will stay strong in her sobriety. "She's not quite as tempted as some of the other people in her life," she says. "I think that Christy is still really growing. I think that her struggle with addiction is very different from her mother's and partly I think [Christy] being a mom and becoming sober when her children were a little bit older sort of wracks her with a little bit of guilt."
Mom airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.