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Unqualified
Anna Faris
Chris Pratt
Since October 2015, a whole lot of people have been getting relationship advice from a very well-intentioned but untrained source — actress Anna Faris — on her ridiculously popular podcast, Unqualified.Anna’s own personal life was messy, even while her career soared as the lead in the Scary Movie franchise, and as the star of the CBS comedy, MOM. She started Unqualified as something gone-a-goof, but the podcast is already getting 1.5 million downloads a month, and is consistently one of the most popular out there.Now, working with collaborator Rachel Bertsche, she is telling all in her first book UNQUALIFIED. Unable to find an ex who would spill the beans, Chris has graciously agreed to write the introduction.
ANNA FARIS is an actress, producer, and top-rated podcaster: Her podcast, Anna Faris is Unqualified, averages four million downloads a month. Faris currently stars on the CBS hit comedy Mom and has had memorable roles on Entourage and Friends. She will next star in MGM/Pantelion Film’s remake of Overboard alongside Eugenio Derbez. Faris produced and starred in The House Bunny and What’s Your Number?, and her additional films include the Scary Movie franchise, Lost in Translation, The Dictator, Observe and Report, Brokeback Mountain, Just Friends, Smiley Face, Keanu, and the Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs franchise. A native of Washington State, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.
To Chris.
Your wisdom and strength have made me a better person.
CONTENTS
Cover (#u758d7e1e-8b18-516b-8d7d-d8783d016aa2)
About the Author (#ubc79bc1a-529c-5aee-bc79-55c0c989735b)
Title Page (#u0a735023-40f6-50b4-b935-b1370e7b2751)
Dedication (#u7c077d3b-d61b-5eae-ab86-77dd1cd48e27)
Forward by Chris Pratt (#ulink_7c6ade19-92b2-5119-b9e8-80bf9b4375ae)
Introduction: I Rote a Book! (#ulink_1f7fb2a7-46cd-5e9f-aa50-e4420ec66894)
The Fastest Boy in the Third Grade (#ulink_6861d4f2-3383-528d-ad4d-c1ad9d54a357)
List to Live By: The Professions of Men You Should Not Date (I Broke My Own Rules) (#ulink_aa873815-3132-5734-bcb0-4d738294c140)
Ich Liebe Dich
Unqualified Advice: Squad Goals?
Losing My Virginity, and Other Horrible Sexual Escapades
Listener Advice: I Was the Short Girl. What Were You?
Proud and Angry
Turning the Tables: Not-So-Rapid Fire
Waiting …
Unqualified Advice: Should You Move for the Guy?
The Wedding Hoopla
Unqualified Advice: Not Enough Soul
Meet My Parents
Playing House
Listener Advice: How to Get Over a Breakup
Take Me Home Tonight. Literally.
Turning the Tables: Deal Breakers
Just Friends: A Conversation Between a Man and a Woman Who’ve Been Pals for Fifteen Years and Haven’t Slept Together
Scoliosis Check
List to Live By: Sex on the Beach and Thirteen Other Things That Sound Better Than They Are
Listener List: Things That Sound Better Than They Are, Part 2
What’s Your Number? (And Why Do We Reveal It?)
Comedy, Fame, and the Gross Words
Unqualified Advice: The Bush Is Back
Can I Marry You?
Unqualified Advice: Unicorns Aren’t Found, They’re Made
Chatroulette
How to Deal with Jealousy
Turning the Tables: How Would You Proceed?
Jack Pratt
Unqualified Advice: Protect Your Heart
Listener Advice: More Love Mantras
Forty
Unqualified Advice: How to Tune Out the Noise
Friday, January 6, 2017
She Said, He Said: What It’s Like to Be a Couple in Hollywood
Unqualified Advice: I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About, but Here’s Some Other Free (Or Only the Cost of This Book) Unqualified Advice
This Is the Chapter That Will Make You Vomit
Don’t Call It Closure
Acknowledgments
Copyright
FORWARD (#ulink_19100344-7c76-520d-996d-5484e35c72ed)
By Chris Pratt
When I was asked to write the forward for Unqualified, Anna’s memoir, I immediately said yes without even thinking about it. And boy did a lot happen between then and now.
So much.
Like … soooo much.
So. Allow me to start by asking some questions:
First and foremost: What is a forward? Like, you know? What is it? Is a forward an anecdote? Like that time Anna and I went to the Beverly Hills library and I told her it was the first time I’d ever been in a library and then she looked at me like I must be joking? And I pretended I was joking? And boy did we laugh. But I wasn’t joking? Is that a forward?
I don’t really read books all that much. I mean, I know how to read, as in sounding out words and phrases, sentences, and the like. I can spell, too! I’ll stop now. I feel like I’m bragging. But let’s just say books aren’t really my specialty. Per se.
I do read a lot of screenplays.
May I paint you a forward in screenplay format?
Fade in.
Int. Bedroom. Night. Chris Pratt (early twenties, roguishly handsome) stares blankly at his phone. He blinks a couple of times.
Distracted, Chris begins watching forearm workout videos for several hours.
Fade out.
Credits roll.
Thunderous applause. Oscar nom Best Short Film. #blessed
Okay … Back to it.
Crickets.
Stares at phone.
Literally googles the word forward.
Wow … Okay. So … it’s actually spelled FOREWORD. With an O and an E. Who knew? Siri did. Of course. We’ve been through a lot, she and I.
Anyhow, lesson learned. Now, let’s move FOREWORD and discuss someone else with whom I’ve been through a lot.
My Foreword
By Chris Pratt
Anna is an important part of my life and she always will be. She asked me to write this foreword. And I’m doing so because I love and respect her and told her I would.
She and I have a striking number of similarities.
We were both raised in Washington State, just twenty minutes from each other. (Coincidentally, we didn’t meet until working together in LA.) I played football on her high school field, a fact I’ve pointed out every single time we’ve driven past that school in ten years, to which, every time, she reacts with a gracious amount of faux wonder, kind sweetheart. We’re both actors who made it in Hollywood, being cast as intelligently played idiots: me, Andy Dwyer; her, Cindy Campbell. We both have scars on our left hands, the results of drunken accidents that left us with nerve damage. We each had dead-bug collections before meeting. And even though they’re not the same, Linda Goodman, author of Love Signs, claims our astrological signs are the most compatible with each other.
But there are a few differences as well. For one: Anna is a voracious information collector. She reads, hears, watches, and retains an inordinate amount of stories—from podcasts and NPR pieces to New Yorker articles. She’ll often pore over the newspaper while simultaneously watching a TV show and blow drying her hair. She reads the big five: The New York Times, LA Times, The Seattle Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. Whereas I read “The Big 5” sporting goods ads, looking for good deals on guns and Rollerblades.
Anna is kind, possibly to a fault. I’m proud to say we each approach most human interactions with politeness, and patience when required. We’re both well-known actors, and it’s worth mentioning—fame can be a pain in the butt. But we’re thick-skinned. And despite what it may seem, we’ll be just fine regardless of what you think of us. She’s been in the spotlight longer than me yet continues to be the voice of reason in uncomfortable situations regarding our lack of anonymity. When approached by fans and photographers, she smiles and shows kindness. As do I, although my annoyance and bubbling anger with paparazzi tend to be more thinly veiled.
Anna is graceful with strangers and fans because she is actually wildly interested in every person she meets. She asks great questions. She communes with anybody and makes an instant connection with each person she meets, which lasts … a VERY SHORT TIME. Like a “goldfish, three seconds, turn around and you’re strangers” kind of way? Almost like Dory from Finding Nemo? Or the movie Memento? And that person, that nameless, forgotten person, knowing full well the moment is over, still somehow walks away feeling charmed and deeper in love than before. That’s just how intoxicating she is.
Being TV and film stars, we live a circus lifestyle, pulled this way and that by jobs, strangers, lives on the road, all in service of the crowd. I see it as a calling in terms of the platform I’ve been given and a job that keeps me from breaking my back doing construction. For Anna, acting is a passion. She simply loves it. More than maybe anyone I know. There are home videos of her playing made-up characters from as early as eight years old. She started younger than that and really hasn’t stopped since. On set and off she is constantly slipping into character, often her go-to clown: the awful party girl you may have seen in Just Friends (perhaps the greatest supporting role in a comedy by anyone ever—no hyperbole), as well as many more with our son. She lives to entertain.
And finally, more than anything, Anna deserves this book. I can promise you it will be a great and interesting read. A face-first dive into the mind and person that I spent one amazing decade with, and will, for the rest of my life, amicably coparent a human. She is the amazing, effervescent, former short girl, theater nerd, camp counselor, crossing guard, headgear-wearing, feistmeister, character-playing Anna Kay Faris, the “I was such a late bloomer I had to actually learn social skills to survive and developed wit to get by and then turned hot later” fan of Real Housewives, good times, extravagance, prudence, herself, her family, podcasts, books, white guilt, neurosis, great foods, repeated deep musical moments, mornings with the newspaper, small bites, feminism, and more.
And in all the years we were together, I don’t think I smelled her farts once. They’re probably not too bad.
Enjoy.
Introduction (#ulink_d357d26c-7ff7-5a10-b18a-0da4192dc485)
I Rote a Book! (#ulink_d357d26c-7ff7-5a10-b18a-0da4192dc485)
I’m not qualified to write a book.
I might as well have woken up one morning and thought, What can I do today that I have no experience doing, that I’m sure to make an ass out of myself while doing, and that will test a population’s patience with my mental ability? Rite a book! So I called my agent and got a book deal. Bingo, bango! Anyone can do this!
Truthfully, though, I’m terrified. I should have done a better job of thinking this through. You know how the biggest decisions in your life never appear as the lightbulb flashes you see in cartoons but instead germinate in the deepest crevasse in your brain and slowly take root until suddenly a blossom emerges in the forefront? That’s pretty much what writing a book was for me. An idea I toyed with now and then, which eventually became more now than then, and suddenly I was pursuing literary agents and, before I had a chance to come to my senses, I was documenting my life (or at least my life in relationships) in writing.
As my mom keeps reminding me, I do have a degree in English from the University of Washington, a school that after five long, hard years taught me that I am unpleasant to be around after smoking weed out of a four-foot bong. But I don’t think anyone, in my seventeen years of living in Hollywood, has ever actually asked me about my education. That’s kind of the beauty (or horror?) of LA. No one gives a shit about any credit outside “the industry.” So writing a book seemed like a fun, exploratory journey into the literary world, and a nice way to flex those English-major muscles.
But now the train has left the station and I feel as though I’m bound to disappoint many people in my life, including you, dear reader. I’m an actor, and have been since I was nine, so I should point out that I have been hiding behind characters and other people’s words for a long time. There is always an out. Writing a book and putting my own words into the world is terrifying in the very way that performing in front of a camera will never be. In 2011, I naively and arrogantly agreed to be the subject of a profile in the New Yorker. It was written over the course of six months and when the fact-checker called me a few weeks before publication to read my own words back to me—words that I had spoken and completely forgotten—I knew I had to leave the country for good. My own vanity was about to destroy all I had worked for in Hollywood. Ultimately that didn’t happen, but I did have to make a couple of apologetic phone calls.
Other small points of concern: I haven’t used a computer properly ever, in my entire life. When you have a job where you make faces and say other people’s words, you don’t have to learn technology. Sometimes you don’t even have to learn how to dress yourself, ’cause nice Lara is there to zip you up. So anyone at your neighborhood nursing home is more qualified to be punching these little buttons on this here keypad.
In fact, I think I might even have a typo in the title of this chapter.
Also, I don’t know why I can’t nap. I know that’s not related, but it sort of is in that I want you to know everything about me, dear reader. You and I will be best friends after all this is over. I would like it if you would send me your autobiography, too.
Oh, and I’m really bad at social media. Why do I need to record everything online? Can’t I just keep it in my brain? But I’m told that it’s necessary to sell a book these days.
So, just so we understand each other, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
