It's Not Necessarily Not the Truth by Jaime Pressly

Jaime Pressly. It’s Not Necessarily Not the Truth: Dreaming Bigger than the Town You’re From. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.

This book is mostly a good collection of events and personalities met before the author became an actress. For instance, her grandmother advised her, when she was a teenager, that “men are like parkin’ spaces. All the good ones are taken an’ the ones left are handicapped.”

When the author went to read for the part of Joy Hickey Turner in the TV show “My Name is Earl”, she did not dress for the part. Other actresses there did. Pressly arrived directly from another audition.

Pressly, though, entered the room for her reading as her character. The people conducting the auditions immediately realized this and appreciated her interpretation of Joy. She received a callback.

Pressly read with lead actor, Jason Lee, at the callback. It was agreed that when she delivered a class line “who’s the whore” so well, without a sense of remorse for her character’s storied past, that she won the role.

There are parts of the show that made her relate to her own colorful grandmother. Joy comments on the show that her wedding dress “is making me sweat like a whore in church.” Her grandmother used to say “that went over as well as a fart in church.”