Becky Ann Baker’s Best TV Mom Roles, Ranked By How Much We Want Them to Be Our Mom
Do you know who Becky Ann Baker is? You should. The mom from Girls. The mom from Freaks and Geeks. The mom from Ted Lasso. The mom from lots of other shows never watched, or never even heard of, that got canceled after one season (Katy Keene, for example). The point is, if a protagonist needs a salt-of-the-Earth mom to deliver some tough love or fill out their backstory, then casting directors need look no further than Becky Ann Baker. Baker has successfully raised a generation of TV teens and adults, and by extension, their audience.
A tried and true character actress, Baker always has the ability to bring a little extra something to her mom roles; it’s not hard to imagine her telling you to pick up your socks or come home for the holidays every once in a while with just the smallest sliver of dialogue. (Though much like the rest of her character actor coterie, Baker has also played her fair share of judges.)
In honor of Mother’s Day, we took a look at some of Baker’s more significant mom roles throughout the years and ranked them based on one clear measure of success: How much do we want her to be our mom?
6. Ted Lasso
If I was birthed by the female Ted Lasso, I, too, would need to cross the Atlantic to escape.
5. Katy Keene
Unlike the entry above, Baker plays not the mother to the titular Katy Keene, but rather Mrs. Kelly, the mother of Katy Keene’s boyfriend, loyal himbo, K.O. Kelly. Despite that, Mrs. Kelly has stepped in as a sort of surrogate mother to Katy, who lost her own when she was young. It is a testament to Baker’s acting prowess that she has about 30 seconds of screentime, delivering the classic “She would be so proud of you” speech, and still it’s enough to make you slightly weepy. Sadly, Katy Keene was canceled after only one season, making this Baker’s only appearance. What she would do with a “Your mother would be so disappointed” speech after Katy breaks K.O.’s heart has to be left to our imaginations. (It would sting, though, of that I am sure.)
4. Girls
Hannah Horvaths aren’t just born—they’re made. Only through the specific combination of Tad and Loreen Horvath could there reasonably be the creation of Hannah, a character who has sparked as much discourse as Don Draper, Walter White, and Tony Soprano. Yeah, when you first meet Loreen, she seems like a huge pill, no longer wanting to bankroll Hannah’s pursuit of artistry in the Big City. Loreen certainly does not say or do everything correctly, but she also isn’t wrong, either—not for her refusal to pay Hannah’s bills, not for telling Hannah to walk away from Adam, and not for her feelings of frustration and loneliness at Tad’s later-in-life emergence from the closet. Baker turns in a performance that is raw but magnetic, serving somehow both as inspirational and a cautionary tale. Plus, by the end of the show, when all the girls have mostly gone their separate ways, it is by Hannah’s side where Loreen still remains.
3. Smash
Weirdly this is not the only show on this list that features a scene in its pilot where Baker and her husband visit from the Midwest and tell their daughter she should give up on their hopes and dreams. Certainly the scene in Smash, wherein Karen Cartwright (Katharine McPhee) is confronted by her disbelieving parents (Becky Ann Baker and her real-life husband, Dylan Baker) lacks the intensity and verve that put Girls on the map, it hits similar beats. See: “Be more practical!” and “New York City is expensive!” Baker gets less to do in Smash than she does Girls, but still manages to make a meal of mouthing the words “Marry him” at her daughter, in regards to her hunky British boyfriend. Though Baker only appears once more throughout Smash’s run, she and Mr. Cartwright seem to come around to their daughter’s choices, with the Cartwrights sort of pulling an anti-Horvath and throwing Karen some cash so she can continue to waitress/actress.
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