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There are TV moms. And there are TV moms played by Connie Britton , a God tier performer who can pull off a legitimately cool parent unlike anyone else. (Apologies to Amy Poehler’s Mean Girls character.) So, if you’re a showrunner wanting their audience to immediately buy in on a bonkers maternal premise — a son wakes up from a coma and decides that his mother/best friend has been replaced by an impostor — who but Friday Night Lights ‘ Tami Taylor would you cast to play the mom and her alleged doppelganger?

Fortunately for Phony creator Nick Paley , he never had to answer that question. “I wrote this letter to her telling her how big a fan I was,” Paley says of his initial ovation. “She was freaked out by this idea of playing two people. This is somebody who could rest on her laurels if she wanted to, but she’s taking a big creative risk.”

He says “two people,” though whether that’s even true or not is the mystery part of this mystery-comedy.…