LOS ANGELES (AP) — Anna Faris sums up her feelings about the People's Choice Awards in a single word.
"Terror," says the actress, who will co-host the 41st annual awards, airing live Wednesday from the Nokia Theatre, with her "Mom" co-star Allison Janney (9 p.m. EST on CBS).
"We don't know what we're doing," Janney added as she sat with Faris for a brief interview recently on the set of their CBS sitcom.
"We've never hosted a show before. I think they're crazy for having picked us. And we're going to prove it," Janney continued with a laugh as Faris giggled beside her.
Previous experience with the People's Choice Awards, which polls the public for its popular-culture picks, doesn't bode well for the two actresses.
Each has been nominated once, last year. And each lost.
And yet "Faris and Janney," as Janney calls them, has emerged as a successful, if unlikely, team.
Before the 2013 debut of "Mom," now in its second season, the 38-year-old Faris starred in six big-screen blockbusters — all comedies. The diminutive blonde's calling card is the 2008 box-office hit "The House Bunny," in which she starred as an over-the-hill Playboy model who gets the boot from the mansion and finds success as a sorority house mother.
Janney, 55, has a resume that includes Tony nominations, key dramatic film roles in such projects as the Oscar-winning "American Beauty" and six Emmy wins — four for the seven seasons she played White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg on "The West Wing" and two more Emmys last year for her guest role as a long-suffering gay man's wife on "Masters of Sex" and for her work with Faris on "Mom."
Forget comparisons to other popular comedy teams.
"I like to think that, as opposed to one of us being the straight person, one of us being the funny person, that we're both the insane people — just at different moments," Faris said.