In “Better Things,” the FX series she co-created, Pamela Adlon plays a character, Sam Fox, loosely based on her own life: A working actress; single mom to three daughters; daughter to an eccentric mother who lives across the street.

This was not, Adlon notes, an idea that the veteran character and voice actor expected to work when she decided to make a TV series for herself seven years ago. (Co-creator Louis C.K. is no longer involved with the show.)

“I remember looking at other things that were on TV, and I was like, ‘Is anybody going to be interested in me starring in a show?’” says Adlon, 55, adding that her first instinct was to make it all up.

“I was doing everything to run away from the reality of my life,” Adlon says a few weeks before the Feb. 28 premiere of the fifth and final season of the acclaimed comedy-drama. “Then, finally, I just decided to step towards it.”

Her mother – “My greatest muse,” Adlon says – had to be a character in whatever she made, she knew. And with more reflection, Adlon thought that her own experiences juggling career, family and friends might connect with viewers.

“I was going to work and I was breastfeeding,” Adlon says of her life before “Better Things.” “Then I was going to do ‘Californication’ and I was going to do ‘King of the Hill.’

“It was crazy, and, I mean, that’s pretty much it. It just came from that.”

‘A magic spaceship’

Celia Imrie, who plays Sam’s mother Phil, short for Phyllis, vividly remembers the Skype call that led to the role.

“It was quite extraordinary because we did realize that we had very many links,” Imrie says from her London home. “One of them was the fact that I had bought the house next door for my mother, which is quite an interesting coincidence.”

Imrie, 69, like Adlon’s mother, is English, so the accent came easily. Finding her way to the offbeat nature of her real-life character took more time.

“I did have the good fortune to meet Pamela’s real mother, who was quite tricky to begin with, I have to say,” Imrie says. “Which, of course, was perfect for Phil.

“It truly is one of my most favorite parts to date,” she says. “There’s nothing so marvelous as behaving badly, which Phil does quite often. Unfiltered Phil, screaming out of the car door, the car window, obscenities.

“It’s been a joy, as you can imagine.”

Part of that is because of the way Adlon writes and directs the show, working to make the characters and stories feel as raw as real life.

“Being such a marvelous actress herself, it’s hard to tell when she’s acting,” Imrie says. “The whole atmosphere is quite bare, quite raw.

“I went off to play Goneril, King Lear’s oldest daughter, at the Old Vic Theatre,” she says. “I came back and Pamela immediately said, ‘Now I don’t want any of that Goneril acting going on here, thank you very much.’”

The intimate storytelling of “Better Things,” which can be hilarious or heartbreaking, or sometimes both at once, is also refreshingly different, Imrie says.

“Often, I think when programs are being developed they say, ‘Well, can we have a bit of “Downton Abbey” and a bit of “Friends,” you know. But you can’t say this is like anything.

“It’s its own magic spaceship, and something magic happens.”

Female stories

Adlon’s three daughters were in their teens when the show began, but from the start, it was easy to tell the TV kids from her own.

“I mean, it was a delight when I realized that there were these three children, and then an entire crew and other cast of people, who listened to me,” she jokes. “I was like, ‘Holy (bleep),’ they not only are listening to me they want my advice. They want me to help them.”

Adlon says her three daughters consulted on the casting of their fictional counterparts, and from the performances of the three young actresses who played them, they chose wisely.

Mikey Madison, who plays the oldest daughter Max, and Olivia Edward, youngest daughter Duke, said in a joint video call that they’ve loved their double life on screen and off. (Hannah Riley, who plays middle kid Frankie, was ill and missed the call.)

“I think what makes the show so special is that it’s real and authentic,” says Edwards, 15. “It kind of shows you things that other shows may skim over or skip, but that’s life, and that’s what I think can relate to the most.”

Madison, 22, pointed to the female-centric and multi-generational perspective of the series as one of her joys.

“I think our show was the first show on FX with an all-female (main) cast,” says the actress, who has recently started moving into grownup roles with parts in the new “Scream” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

“I remember thinking how shocking that was, but also how exciting,” she says. “We’re just really lucky to tell a story about females.”

At times, the lines blurred between their fictional and real lives, both say.

“One of the main things that was in the show is the subject of Duke seeing energies and her seeing her (late) grandfather,” says Edward, whose father, John Edward, is a well-known psychic and TV personality.

“The subject matter was all around me all the time growing up,” she says. “So I was super grateful for that to be incorporated because I was like, ‘I know this; this is really cool.’”

For Madison, it was her personal love of photography that bled into Max’s character.

“I use my own camera in the show,” she says. “Shot a lot of the photos that are now hanging up in Max’s room.”

The three TV daughters have grown as tight as real sisters in their years on the show, Madison and Edward say.

“I’ve known Olivia for seven years,” Madison says. “I met her and she was literally up to my belly button, and now I’ve watched her grow up and turn into this really incredible young woman.”

Edwards laughs at the belly button line – in the early episodes of the forthcoming season, there are comments about how tall she’s grown – and says she feels the same way about Madison and Riley.

“You guys have been like my big sisters growing up,” she says. “Part of that double life was you, so I’m really grateful I was able to work with you.”

New challenges

Five seasons in, Adlon says it still surprises her when viewers tell her how much they love the series.

“I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, people are connecting to it,’” she says. “Because you don’t really know. And then you meet some people who let you know how deeply it moves them or what it means to them.

“I never in a million years thought it,” Adlon says. “I couldn’t picture it being a thing that even lasted, or that people were going to talk about. I just wanted to make something that was going to be good enough.”

So why end it now? Adlon says that much like the way she shaped “Better Things” out of the raw material of her life, the decision to close this chapter seemed the right instinct.

“When I first started talking about it with my network, I had a stomachache,” she says. “And then, when we finished the conversation, I felt excited. It invigorated me.”

She spent 13 seasons on “King of the Hill” as the voice of Bobby Hill. Seven seasons on the David Duchovny-starring “Californication.” Five seasons of “Better Things” felt right.

“I can’t believe we did five,” Adlon says. “It’s mind-boggling that anything at all sustains, so I feel like it’s a really good time to move on.”

“Better Things” gave her “the opportunity to become the storyteller that I am now,” she says. “And the way I tell stories and the way I make pictures and the way I make things sound.

“I’m excited to make more television and apply the skills that I have now to other mediums,” Adlon says. “It’s a new challenge.”

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