Anna Faris is ‘Unqualified’ with new book

On the first page of her new memoir, Unqualified, Anna Faris confesses that she’s not exactly thrilled to be writing a book: “I’m terrified.”

Considering some of the personal and embarrassing revelations that follow, fear is understandable. Faris, who stars in the CBS sitcom Mom and has appeared in nearly 40 movies, covers an impressive range of taboo subjects: her plastic surgery, the number — and names — of people she’s slept with, and her feelings of jealousy when her husband, the actor Chris Pratt, would appear on screen with beautiful co-stars.

But when she sold her memoir to Dutton last year, Faris had no idea how awkward things would get. The book, which is out on Tuesday, blends relationship advice with Faris’ reflections on her romantic follies — yet it comes just a couple of months after the announcement of her separation from Pratt, after eight years of marriage.

She decided, as she often does when she’s feeling uncertain, to plunge ahead, despite the fact that her book casts an idealistic light on their marriage and barely alludes to its demise.

“At first, I was really nervous about the idea of the book coming out and coinciding with these major life changes we were having, but Chris is amazing,” Faris said in an interview, noting that she made minor revisions but decided not to drastically alter or postpone the publication.

For Faris, the break-up creates an added wrinkle for an already anxiety-inducing moment in her career, as she prepares to promote the book in television appearances and bookstore events where, inevitably, the subject of her marriage and separation will come up.

“The book release would have been terrifying regardless,” she said, adding that it was even more so “with the new complications in my life.”

“I’ve never done anything like this,” she added. “I get to hide behind characters.”

She’s resigned herself to fielding questions about the split and says that if she had published the memoir a year from now, she would have had time to reflect on and address their separation in the book. “The story is kind of dull,” she said. “It’s a little bit like, two incredibly busy people that care a lot for each other got really busy.”

Faris’ editor at Dutton, Jill Schwartzman, said she was confident that the memoir wouldn’t be overshadowed by Faris’ separation because it’s ultimately a funny and revealing look at Faris, through the lens of her relationships.

Unqualified, which grew out of Faris’ popular podcast, is goofily self-deprecating, casually profane and occasionally raw, earnest and blunt, like Faris herself. She seems determined to catalogue her own flaws and foibles — an offensive tactic, she admits, against critics who would gladly pile on. She concedes that she can be heedless and impulsive in love.

But coming on the heels of her separation from Pratt, the book often reads like a love letter — or now, a heartfelt epitaph — to a marriage.

Pratt — who went from playing a lovable, dim-witted side character on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation to full-blown movie stardom, with leading roles in blockbusters such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World — is a looming presence in Unqualified, from the first page to the acknowledgements. Faris dedicated the book to him and thanks him for “being just about the best person I know.”

In his foreword to the book, Pratt obliquely references the separation, and intentionally butchers the spelling of “foreword”. as part of a running joke that he doesn’t know what the word means. “When I was asked to write the forward for Unqualified, Anna’s memoir, I immediately said yes without even thinking about it,” he writes. “And boy did a lot happen between then and now. So much. Like … soooo much.” Pratt also makes an extended guest appearance later in the book, in a chapter titled, “She Said, He Said: What It’s Like to Be a Couple in Hollywood,” which consists entirely of dialogue between them. (A publicist for Pratt said he was unable to comment for this article because “his schedule is completely overcommitted at this point”.)

Faris, 40, grew up in Edmonds, Washington, and has been acting since she was nine. She got a degree in English literature from the University of Washington, then moved to Los Angeles. Her first role in a major film was playing Cindy Campbell in Scary Movie, a campy horror parody. In the ensuing years, she was often cast as the drunk girl, the ditsy sidekick or the adorable goofball. Eventually, she started producing and landing leading roles in comedies such as The House Bunny and What’s Your Number?. Next year, she stars in a remake of the 1987 romantic comedy Overboard, which originally featured Goldie Hawn as a self-involved heiress.

In 2015, she started a podcast, Anna Faris Is Unqualified, a show that has been described as a mash-up between Marc Maron and Dear Abby. On the show, Faris and her co-host, Sim Sarna, take calls from listeners and dole out relationship advice, often with celebrity guests weighing in (T.J. Miller, Lisa Kudrow, Aubrey Plaza and Chelsea Handler have all made appearances). The podcast gave her the idea for the book.

In the last chapter of Unqualified, Faris noted that she started seeing a therapist while writing the book and that she has grown sceptical of the idea of “closure” following a break-up.

“I just wanted to make sure that anyone who was actually willing to read the book felt like I wasn’t glorifying my life at all. I am clearly a flawed person,” she said in the interview. “This is terrifying,” she added — that word again — “that I’m writing about stuff that makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.”