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Motherhood may be a full-time role, but Jaime Pressly wasn’t exactly ready to let it become her only one.
“That was a really hard thing that held me back for years,” Pressly, 49, exclusively told Us about the struggles she faced pursuing her acting and producing dreams with being the hands-on mom she wanted to be at home.
The push and pull between Hollywood and motherhood began as her TV comedy career took off and in 2007 she welcomed her first son, Dezi, whom she shares with ex Eric Calvo – the same year she took home her first Emmy for playing the hilariously unfiltered Joy Turner on My Name is Earl. A decade later, Pressly was pulling double mom duty, starring on the hit sitcom Mom while taking on the title offscreen with the birth of twins Leo and Lenon, now 8.
At the time, Pressly found a rhythm that kept those two worlds in harmony, as she previously shared with Us that working on Mom allowed her to be with her children “every morning and every night” – that is, until production began moving outside of Los Angeles, which she said made the balancing act much harder to maintain.
“I had all three boys with me, and when everything left town and nothing shot [in Los Angeles] anymore, it was like I couldn’t take work,” she told Us.
While the Leanne star tried making out-of-town jobs work with the help of a nanny, she says she soon realized it wasn’t a long-term solution. If work was going to take her away from home, Pressly needed help – and her twins’ father, Hamzi Hijaz, 48, stepped up.
Before heading to Birmingham, Alabama, to film her latest project, Last Shot – her first starring role as a producer — Pressly said her ex has been on daddy duty.
“The twins’ dad and I got back to being really good friends,” she says about how their healthy family dynamic has made all the difference when it comes to her career. “It’s honestly because [Hamzi] stepped up and [has] been here for the boys, so that I could go and do my thing.”
While she’s been working on another film in Atlanta, Hijaz has been temporarily staying at her house. “I’m the sole provider for all three boys. I need to. And he’s been staying in the spare bedroom at the house,” Pressly said of their co-parenting style that is working out “100 percent” while she’s been on set. “He’s been staying with the boys, and literally, that is the only reason why I’ve been able to get back to work and really go and do what I want to do.”
Fittingly, the film that helped get Pressly back on set also challenged her to step into the shoes of a mother whose choices couldn’t be further from her own. In Last Shot, which hits theatres Friday, October 2, Pressly plays Lexi, a music executive who left her young son to be raised by his father, played by Michael Rapaport – something the mom of three admits was difficult for her to fully wrap her head around at first.
“I couldn’t imagine being this character who had left her kid when he was very young with the father,” she told Us. “That doesn’t compute to me. She has zero maternal instincts, and she never raised her son. And I have three boys, and I can’t fathom the thought of not being there for them, or raising them.”
But in order to understand her character, Pressly put herself in Lexi’s shoes.
“She wasn’t really loved as a kid in the tactile way that I love my boys, where I hug and squeeze them and love them and I’m very affectionate with them all the time,” Pressly explained. “She never really had that, so she doesn’t understand how to give that. So this was a challenge, and I loved it.”
As Pressly returns to a dramatic role, she says she hopes her sons are taking something away from watching her pursue her career – even if they aren’t exactly keeping tabs on mom’s work.
“You would like to think that they would see how hard you work,” she told Us. “You hope that they would gain something from that and that it would rub off on them.”
Whether they’re actually watching is another story, as Pressly admits her twins, who both turn 9 in October, “don’t care” about what mom does for a living, while Dezi, 19, just recently started watching My Name is Earl with friends.
But after nearly three decades in the spotlight, Pressly takes it all in stride – even when it comes to impressing the toughest audience in her house.
“You want to make sure that the roles you’re picking aren’t going to be roles that your kids would be embarrassed of. Do you know what I mean? So that really does matter to me, although none of them pay attention to what I do” she said, laughing. “I mean, that’s normal. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
If anything, keeping her career from defining who she is to her sons is exactly what she has worked toward.
“I’ve tried to keep their lives as normal as possible,” she said. “It’s not who I am. I’m mom.”
