With the advent of holiday break, the Ministry chatted with the star about her experience returning to work as the centerpiece of an ensemble comedy and raising her 4-year-old, Dezi.

“You know, in a lot of ways a multi-camera sitcom is amazing for a working mom,” Pressly told us recently via phone, “I’m picking him up and dropping him off, present with him. It’s amazing.”

“Tuesdays we tape ‘Teenage Daughter’ in front of the live audience, and that’s when Dezi sees his dad, so it runs very smoothly. I’m really lucky.”

Pressly said coming back to TV, especially after a cult favorite like “Earl,” wasn’t an easy decision.

“So many people loved Joy [her 'Earl' character], so I really needed something that was the right fit. And I’m so thrilled to say that, honestly, everyone on this show is incredibly talented and so down to earth. People say you become a family, but that’s what we are,” said Pressly.

As Annie Watson on “Daughter,” Pressly inhabits the shoes of a woman with an ultra-conservative upbringing dealing with her own free-spirited daughter. The Ministry wondered how much reflecting Pressly did of her own teen years.

“I was so strong willed and very driven,” Pressly reflected, “I started in the business so young, I was modeling at 15 and had to be emancipated from my parents so I could travel to Japan and work … but I’m grateful for that experience.”

Speaking of experience, she can compare notes with her costar Katie Finneran, who just announced her second pregnancy.

“Daughter” airs at 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays on Fox.

LATimes.com

No one knows this better than Annie (Jaime Pressly) and Nikki (Katie Finneran) of Fox’s new comedy I Hate My Teenage Daughter, whose daughters Sophie (Kristi Lauren) and Mackenzie (Aisha Dee) are harder to deal with than the lines at Target on Black Friday.

With just 12 days until Christmas (yes, really!), Annie and Nikki decided to spread the wealth and share their exclusive tips for making it through the holiday season unscathed…

Without further ado, here are Annie and Nikki’s tips on how to survive this holiday season:

1. Simplify things by dropping weird family traditions. You don’t need to knit your own stockings every year.
2. Give your teenage daughter her best present early to keep her on her best behavior. Butter her up like a Christmas turkey.
3. Remember to lean on your friends for support…and sometimes sending your daughter to their house.
4. If you want to guarantee you’ll see your rock musician ex over the holidays, buy a concert ticket.
5. If your teenage daughter is giving you a lot of trouble, take her for a nice ride to look at beautiful Christmas lights. Then drive slowly past the house of the boy she likes. Wave, honk, repeat.
6. There are only three ways to get your teenage daughter to help with holiday preparations: bribery, guilt and bribery.
7. A little extra rum goes a long way in your eggnog when trying to tune out your teenage daughter’s insults.
8. Get gift receipts for everything! Chances are she’s going to hate it…because you gave it to her.
9. Put on the most obnoxious, hideously ugly holiday sweater you can find and watch your daughter’s head explode from embarrassment.
10. Start a new tradition. This year we’re going to have a “Christmas Eve Pumpkin Pie Eating Contest.” I got this in the bag.
11. Have your ex-husband dress up like Santa and hand out gifts on Christmas morning. He’ll love that.
12. Threaten your daughter that you’re going to go caroling in the nude if she doesn’t spend some quality time with you. Blackmail is always effective.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on Fox.

EOnline.com

“In order for me to come back to TV — being that Earl is still on [in reruns] and that Joy was such a strong character — I have to be able to play something that was completely opposite of her,” Pressly told reporters on a conference call last week for her new series I Hate My Teenage Daughter. “And this character is definitely that.”

On the Fox sitcom, premiering Wednesday at 9:30/8:30c on Fox, Pressly is now the one being bullied as a single mother who begins to realize her spoiled teenage daughter is morphing into the type of girl that made her life hell in high school. While Earl’s Joy was known for her high hair, big ego and even bigger mouth, Pressly describes her new character Annie as “grounded” and “a bit of a dork.”

“It’s been incredible to be allowed to play a character against type. In this business, you can be pigeon-holed very easily,” she said. “If people see that you’re good at doing something, they either assume that that’s all you can do, or they assume, ‘Oh, that’s just who she is.’”

Pressly has found inspiration this time from being a mother herself. “I am a single mom, so in reading it, I loved the relationship between myself and Katie [Finneran]‘s character, because, honestly if it wasn’t for my best friends, I don’t know how I would have gotten through all these tough times,” she said. “You just do your best to deal with every situation and when you have a best friend with you to help you deal with it, it just makes things that much easier.”

Her own son, four-year-old Dezi, has a long way to go before hitting puberty, but Pressly sympathizes with her on-screen alter-ego.”It’s hard raising a teenager. They are in hormone hell. They think they know everything,” she said. “It’s not a mean-spirited show, but it is something that goes on. Quite frankly, the daughters bully their moms more than anybody.”

Although she says the show itself isn’t mean-spirited in nature, Pressly embraces the sitcom’s harsh title for its honesty about the parent-child bond. “Whether it’s upsetting them, or they like it and agree with it, its grabbing people’s attention and that was the point of it in the first place,” she said. “We’re just saying it for you, because it’s a moment that every parent has actually had where they just want to say, ‘Oh, my God, I hate my teenager,’ but you don’t really. Just, on occasion, they can do things that make you want to want crawl into a fetal position.”

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ELLE: So what’s the central idea in your new show, I Hate My Teenage Daughter?
JP: It’s a lot about the relationship between my character, Annie, and Katie Finneran’s character, Nikki. The two women didn’t have great experiences in high school and so, we want our kids—we’re both single moms on the show—we want our girls to have everything we didn’t have. In the end, trying to give them everything we didn’t have backfires on us, as it does for most parents, and their fourteen-year-old hormonehell puts us through it.

ELLE: What stood out most about this role?
JP: Annie comes from a religious background. Her mother made all of her clothes and her dad was in the military. She was never allowed to go to dances or listen to music, she has no clue about pop culture, she’s really goofy and wasn’t cool in high school—the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever played. And I like playing this because everybody’s expecting me to play a Joy character again and I want to get away from that. I’ve done it. I’m an actress. I didn’t get into the business to play the same thing over and over.

ELLE: When did you first realize you were funny?
JP: When I was three. I was on stage doing a dance recital. We did a Kermit the Frog routine. Immediately following, they had us all come out individually and do a little trick on the mat. I came out and put my legs around my head and walked on my hands, like a crab. My teacher, Ms. Jody, said, “OK, Jaime, you can take them down now.” And I said, “Ms. Jody, my tights are stuck in my hair.” My hairpiece had sequins on it, so my tights got stuck. She tried to get it out but couldn’t. Everybody started laughing and instead of being embarrassed, I was like, “What! They are laughing at me! I am funny!” When I got off stage, my mom cut the thing out of my hair and I said, “Mom, did you see that? I made them laugh. I’m famous.’

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The comedy premieres November 30 on FOX and showcases Pressly’s comedy, as a mother of a difficult girl. Along with her best friend (Katie Finneran), the moms both try to get through to their kids week after week. Pressly discussed her own family and teenage years while previewing the new sitcom.

Q: How is the comedy in this different from My Name Is Earl? Is it the same target audience?

JP: No. I definitely think, first of all, the format’s so different which I love and I chose. All I did was go after multi-camera this time because I want to be a mom. I eventually would like to have another child. The truth is working on single camera, show or film, you have no life. You work 60-80 hours a week. You’re up before your kid gets up and you’re home when they go to sleep. I only got to see him on set. I’ve enjoyed the last two years of being able to wake up with him and see him and be with him and be a part of that because they’re only little once. So being able to have this new schedule was awesome. Now as far as the comedy’s concerned, we’re definitely not as cutthroat and pushing the envelope as much as we did on Earl. That was a little more rough around the edges whereas this is a little more cleaned up and just really showing how difficult it is.

Q: Have you thought about how you’ll handle your son’s teenage years?

JP: I’m going to take everything one step at a time. We’ll cross the path when we get to it. I’m somebody who I want to be your mom, and we can be friends but more importantly I’m your mom. And I’m strict. You have to have manners and you will appreciate, because God knows he has enough toys for a small village in Africa. So my child takes the trash out at 4.

Q: What do you think about the mom wardrobe you’ll be wearing on this show?

JP: I love it. I love it. Two things with this. With Joy [on My Name Is Earl] it was hooker clothes all the time. I mean, it was uncomfortable, but then in real life I have to go so against character, her character that I had to wear turtlenecks and I had a child and so all of a sudden I’m a mom and I’m having to go against type. Now I’m playing this really conservative mom so I can come back and feel sexy again. I’m 34. I don’t need to dress like I’m eighty four. I can have fun now.

Q: So, you can break out the hooker clothes from your own closet?

JP: See, I don’t have any hooker clothes. I can just at least wear a short dress. Whereas before I was having to wear everything below the knee.

Q: How do you balance your son and working on the show now?

JP: It’s bee nice because the last two years while I’ve worked I’ve chosen or picked very few things that I liked to do that were quick and easy, but I’ve been able to be home and be with my son and take him to school and pick him up, play dates everywhere.

Q: Will you bring him to set?

JP: Oh, God, he loves the set. He goes and sits right beside…when we were shooting this he sat right beside Andy Ackerman and he watched the director, and you know the guy who wants to say it first, that’s Jesse. He’s like this, “Action. Cut.” When he says action though I burst into laughter. I can’t really do it.

Q: For people who don’t have teenage daughters, what will they get out of the show?

JP: You can be a divorcée. You can be a single parent. You can be the sister or brother of a teenage ass. I mean, it’s really relatable to pretty much everybody that I’ve come in contact with, whether they are married or divorced or have children. I was that difficult 14-year-old. I think it pretty much runs the gamut. It’s one of those things where for 30 minutes everybody, especially parents, are going to be able to sit down and escape for a second and realize they’re not alone, that they’re not the only ones in that hormone hell that they’re in with their children. First of all, real comedy comes from drama, and real drama, while you’re in it, you’re blind. Hindsight’s 20/20, so when you’re in it, you kind of don’t know what you’re supposed to do or how to handle it, and kids these days have so much technology and are so much smarter than we were. They’re talking over our head and Googling and tweeting and doing all these things. So just seeing two people who have no idea how to do any of that and couldn’t be further from their daughters as far as popularity or pretty or clothes or whatever. It doesn’t have to be Teenage Daughter. I don’t know anybody that has a teenage son or daughter who at some point hasn’t been like, “God, I hate them” just under their breath. It’s not meant to be literal. It’s funny.

Q: How were you difficult?

JP: Well, at 14, especially for a girl, it’s hormone hell. We all think we know everything. I was very strong minded. I still am. I was emancipated at 15 and off to Japan on a contract working. I felt for my parents. I apologized profusely years later, but I was just very strong willed and strong minded and had my own idea, thought outside of the box. And coming from a small town, I really didn’t fit in at all, so it was great that we did move when I was 14 to California.

Q: Were you more like the popular cool girls than the geeky dorky girls?

JP: I don’t like to say dork and nerd and things like that because I think that everyone is cool in their own right. I mean, really I do. I was treated like dirt by the mean girls. I did everything I could to get away. That’s why I ended up in California, and Japan because I tricked my parents. Back in North Carolina, I wasn’t treated well by the mean girls. I was the outcast. I was the tomboy. I dressed like a boy. Most of my friends were boys. I begged my parents to send me away to boarding school, and I don’t know any kid that does that. They refused, and I was like, “Okay. I’ll handle it myself.” So behind their backs I went and entered all these model searches, sent a bunch of pictures in, and long story short, I ended up becoming a spokesmodel for one of the searches. My mom and I moved out in June in ’92, the month I was on my first cover of Teen Magazine. And then I went [sticks her tongue out] to the mean girls. When I came to California, it was this whole world. Where I’m from, it was only black and white, and I got along with black and white. It wasn’t that. It’s when I moved to California, it was like outside the box that I’d been living in. It was every different ethnic group, and it was like this melting pot of people, and I loved it. So I hung out with every group when I moved here. I got along with everybody and I always have.

Q: Has anyone from high school ever come back and found you, especially now with Facebook?

JP: I don’t do Facebook.

Q: So has anyone from high school come to find you since you’ve been famous?

JP: Whenever I go home to North Carolina to visit I run into people that I went to high school with randomly, but I still have the same best friend since I was five from back home. I still have my same five girlfriends. There’s the six of us that all have kids, married, divorced, whatever. We’re all super tight, still best friends, very close for the last twenty years, and then I still have my Katie Mack from back home.

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Tuesday, November 29th: CHELSEA LATELY, E!
Wednesday, November 30th: LIVE WITH KELLY, syndicated

The series, premiering on Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 9:30/8:30c, follows single moms Annie (Pressly) and Nikki (Katie Finneran), who realize that by raising their daughters to be cool (as opposed to the nerds they were in high school), they have actually created two bratty monsters. “The relationship between Annie, my character, and my daughter Sophie is actually a really good one,” Pressly says. Adds Kristi Lauren, who plays Annie’s daughter: “Annie let Sophie grow up without a lot of rules and so Sophie thinks, ‘Oh, I can do whatever I want.’ They always have this struggle for power.”

Mark Consuelos joins I Hate My Teenage Daughter

The question is whether both women can (finally) start disciplining their daughters, but also keeping those mother-daughter bonds intact. “My problem is that I always want my daughter to love me so much,” Finneran says with a laugh.

Watch an exclusive first look at I Hate My Teenage Daughter:

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