Watch: Why Anna Faris Felt Like She Didn’t Fit In With Other Moms
Anna Faris never had to worry that she was unqualified for motherhood.
But she still questioned whether she was “fundamentally suited” for the role, telling E! News at the premiere of her new comedy Spa Weekend, in theaters Aug. 21, that before welcoming son Jack with then-husband Chris Pratt 14 years ago, she was already covered by “a blanket of guilt.”
Therefore, so-called mom guilt was same-old.
Hanging out with other mothers, she always felt as if she was “messing up somehow,” the 49-year-old explained. “I know I’m doing something wrong here.”
So, though Faris is admittedly raising “this incredible, fascinating boy,” she was quick to add, “I hope I’m doing OK.”
From her lips to every parent’s ears, but the Mom alum has been candid about not always feeling as if she has a grasp on the task at hand. She even used to worry that that she wasn’t worrying enough.
Case in point, when she and Pratt dropped Jack off on his first day of kindergarten.
“I feel really guilty that I wasn’t more anxious,” she shared on The Talk in 2018. “It feels like all of the other parents were really anxious and the kindergarten teachers are asking, ‘Oh, is everything gonna be okay?’ I felt like, can’t we just drop him off?”
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As Jack “just ran in and was like, ‘Bye guys!’” she recalled, “it was that funny mom guilt feeling, where I feel like this should emotionally tug at me more than it is.”
But considering all that Jack had already overcome, perhaps Faris just had faith that school would be child’s play for him.
Born nine weeks early and weighing only 3 pounds, 12 ounces, Jack spent more than his fair share of time in the hospital, including a month in the NICU before she and Pratt could take him home.
Then he had “a few hernia surgeries, he’s had a few eye surgeries and he had a little heart issue as well,” Faris shared on her Unqualified podcast in 2018. Jack’s premature birth “came as a huge shock and suddenly, your world completely shifts.”
But those harrowing few years made every subsequent milestone feel all the more miraculous.
“He’s a total ham,” Faris said of her then-4-year-old on HuffPost Live in 2016. “I get a kick out of him.”
The House Bunny star, however, was still her own toughest critic.
“Especially as a woman, your identity changes,” Faris explained. “You are now a mom, sort of the most important job in the world, and the pressure and the guilt and all the things that are sort of wrapped up in that, I don’t think anyone can prepare you for.”
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Faris then had the challenge of weathering her separation from Pratt in 2017 after seven years of marriage—though that did not include any legal sparring over what was best for Jack.
“He’s surrounded by so much love,” Faris told E! in January 2018 while divorce proceedings were underway, with the exes seeking joint custody. “We constantly reinforce what a great kid he is.”
Of course, they disciplined him “when he’s being a little bit naughty,” she added, but, “I think the key is surrounding him with a lot of joy and happiness, which he has a ton of.”
By then Faris was dating now-husband Michael Barrett, having met the cinematographer while shooting Overboard, and she introduced him to Jack early on, wanting the leading men in her life—as well as Barrett’s two children from his first marriage—to be as comfortable with each other as possible. (And Pratt did the same when it came to including Jack in activities with his now-wife Katherine Schwarzenegger when they first started dating.)
“He’s such a sweet, happy kid,” Faris raved to E! in April 2019. “I’m so proud. He’s really funny.”
She quipped, “Maybe all parents think that, because you go through those first years and you’re so numb, you’ve had a lobotomy because life is hell. And then, so if they say something mildly amusing, like, I don’t know, ‘That apple’s green,’ you’re like, ‘Whoa, what a kid!'”
And yet Jack continued to impress, with Faris marveling last year that she didn’t know how her son turned out to be such a grounded human.
“He’s always had such a solid anchor,” she told People in March 2025. “I don’t know where, being a kid in Hollywood, he got that. I don’t know how he got so down-to-earth, but I’m really grateful.”
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And his savviness knows no bounds, perhaps because his mom let him sweet-talk her into watching almost any movie from an early age.
“It turns out, he knows everything,” Faris told Entertainment Tonight at the June 3 premiere of Scary Movie, where the teen—a couple months shy of his 14th birthday at the time—joined her and Barrett on the red carpet in support of his mom’s fifth turn as heroically clueless Cindy Campbell in the R-rated franchise. “He knows way more than I thought he did, so I actually feel comfortable bringing him here.”
She was hoping to “finally score some legitimacy points,” she added. “The Wayans brothers are nothing if not cool.”
Big blended families can also be pretty neat, so read on for more about Faris and Pratt’s:
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Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Prime Video
Cleobella x Katherine Schwarzenegger
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Instagram / Katherine Schwarzenneger
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Instagram / Joseph Baena
While Joseph was born in 1997, Arnold didn’t find out he was the father until much later.”I had an affair in ’96,” The Terminator alum said in his 2023 docuseries Arnold. “In the beginning, I really didn’t know. I just started kind of feeling. The older he got, the more it became clear to me, and it was then just really a matter of how do you keep this quiet? How do you keep this a secret?”While Arnold called the affair a “major failure” in his life, he noted that Joseph makes him proud.”It was wrong what I did,” he said in the doc. “But I don’t want to make Joseph feel that he’s not welcome in this world because he’s very much welcome in this world. And I love him, and he’s turned out to be an extraordinary young man.”Like his dad Arnold, Joseph is an actor and has a passion for fitness. He also works in real estate and competed on season 31 of Dancing With the Stars.
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