The Untold Truth Of Sarah Chalke
Sarah Chalke started acting at a young age, and in 1993, the actress started playing Becky Conner on Roseanne after Lecy Goranson left the series. Since then, Chalke has popped up on different television series, including How I Met Your Mother, Cougar Town, and of course, Scrubs.
Despite Chalke's success, the Hollywood star revealed that she learned "resilience" over the years, especially early on. "You've got to throw your hat in the ring a lot of times, and a lot of times, it doesn't work out," she told News 24 in May 2020. "In your late teens, you just have to deal with that level of rejection, pick yourself up after you failed and say, 'Let's go back into the audition room.' You gotta have the right perspective on auditioning — 'I'll just go in there and do my best and next.'"
These days, Chalke voices Beth Smith on Rick and Morty, and in May 2020, she appeared in The Wrong Missy on Netflix, alongside David Spade, Molly Sims, and Lauren Lapkus. Let's find out more about Chalke and her long-standing career in the entertainment industry.
Sarah Chalke almost missed out on her famous 'Scrubs' role
Sarah Chalke played Dr. Elliot Reid on Scrubs from 2001 to 2010, but the actress revealed her social plans almost got in the way of her audition. Chalke had just moved to Los Angeles with her best friend at the time and they "had plans to go to a show," but Chalke got "two auditions for the next morning." "I'm so Type A, and normally I work on an audition from the second I get it until the second I go in the room," she told Digital Spy in May 2020. "And I was like, 'I'm not canceling. I'm not canceling these plans. Whatever these two auditions are, I'm not canceling these plans.'"
However, once Chalke got home at midnight, she read the Scrubs pilot and realized she needed to get her act together right away. "I was like, 'Oh, s**t. This is really, really, really good. I want this so badly!'" she exclaimed. "And the audition was at 9 a.m. So I thought, 'Okay, I'll skip the other audition, and I'll just focus on the Scrubs one.' I went in the next morning at 9, and, yeah, I'll never forget the moment that Bill [Lawrence, the showrunner] called me and was like, 'You've got it.'"
During her time on Scrubs, Chalke got close with co-stars Donald Faison and Zach Braff. "It was one of those magical situations where everything kind of came together," she gushed.
Inside Sarah Chalke's medical struggle with her son
Sarah Chalke played a fictional doctor on Scrubs, but when her son, Charlie, was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease — a condition that mostly affects kids younger than 5 years old — she wanted to raise awareness to the public. "It was absolutely the hardest thing I've ever been through, and there's nothing in the world like not knowing if your kid is going to be okay," Chalke told E! News in 2013. The actress decided to pitch Shonda Rhimes — who's the showrunner of Grey's Anatomy — about what happened with her son and Rhimes was all for the idea.
"Someone suggested doing an episode on a medical show on television where you can reach millions of people in one night," explained Chalke — who also shares daughter Frances with her fiancé, Jamie Afifi. She noted that "there is a treatment" for the disease, but you "only have a 10-day window to get it." "If you don't get that, there's so much inflammation in the body that the danger is that you can get aneurysms because there can be damage to the coronary arteries, and then the kid can have a heart attack," Chalke said.
Luckily, it seems like Chalke's brood is doing just fine these days, and she is thankful for both of her kiddos. "I feel like I didn't know what [parenting] would be like with both, and really, it just feels like [Francis] has completed everything," she told People in 2017.
Here's why fans are still upset with Sarah Chalke
Sarah Chalke is known for playing a lot of different characters on television, but the Hollywood star revealed there's one particular role that still makes fans upset to this day. "I still get people so mad at me for leaving Ted at the altar on social media, and sometimes in the street!" Chalke divulged to Metro U.K. in May 2020, referring to her How I Met Your Mother character, Stella Zinman, who left Ted Mosby (Joshua Radnor) before their wedding and went back to the father of her child.
Chalke — who appeared as Ted's love interest in Season 3 and 4 of HIMYM — was only supposed to be in one episode, but the writers decided to bring her back for an extended period of time, even though she was filming Scrubs at the same time. "Luckily, my boss at Scrubs was very generous to say, 'Yes, we can make it work. We'll just have to kind of schedule it creatively,'" she revealed. "It was a busy time and did not involve a lot of sleep! But it was so worth it, and I had the best time."
According to IMDb, Chalke currently has 77 credits to her name, so if you don't know her now, you better get used to seeing her more often on the big and small screen.