‘Mom’ Star Allison Janney Dropped Jaws With Her Return for Final Season

Allison Janney worked with the producers of her CBS sitcom Mom for eight seasons, but she still found a way to surprise them when she arrived on the set. Janney, 61, showed up without the long blonde wig and revealed her natural short gray hair. Since even the producers had only seen her with the long hair, they were not only shocked but also a little worried.

“No one knew I was wearing a wig. And I come in for this season of Mom and the producers see me like this,” Janney said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this week as she gestured towards her hair. “And they’re like, ‘What have you done? How are we gonna do — you should have asked us before you did this to your hair!’” She then told the staff that she has been wearing the long wig since Season 1, but no one knew it. “But everybody knows it now,” the Oscar-winner said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Janney said it was bittersweet to see Mom end. The show is in the middle of Season 8, which will be its last season. Anna Faris, who played Janney’s daughter on the show, announced she was leaving in December and CBS canceled the show in February. Janney said she was “sad” to see the show end, especially since so many people connected with the characters who struggled with addiction.

“I think it’s so great when you get to entertain people, but also put something out there in the world that helps destigmatize something like recovery and make it more approachable to people,” Janney told Jimmy Fallon, notes Entertainment Tonight. “It’s done so much for so many people. I get tons of letters and fans coming up to me, [who are] so appreciative of what the show’s done for them.”

The I, Tonya star also stopped by The Drew Barrymore Show this week, opening up about how freeing it felt to stick with her natural hair. “I cannot tell you how amazing it is to feel free — free from hair color, and hair extensions, and hair tapes, and blah blah blah,” she told Drew Barrymore. She said she was enjoying the “new chapter” in her “hairdo world.” She went on to joke, “Hopefully sometime a man would be able to run his hands through my hair and appreciate it.”

While Janney joked about meeting a new man, she told Barrymore she didn’t regret not marrying or having kids. “I really am at this time in my life getting to know who I am and what I want. So I’d love to eventually find someone to share my life with, but if it doesn’t happen, I think I’ll be just fine,” she said.

Mom airs on CBS Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET. You can stream past episodes on Paramount+. Disclosure: PopCulture is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.