Sarah Chalke had not even been cast on the biggest TV comedy of the ’90s when the public backlash nearly stripped her of the job.
“The only reason that I could do it is that I was young and naïve,” Chalke, 49, told Obsessed: The Podcast about joining Roseanne at its peak. “It’s not that I didn’t feel the pressure; I did, but I think being young and new was actually kind of in my favor at the time.”
Chalke became Roseanne’s new Becky in 1993 after the original actress, Lecy Goranson, left the show to attend college. When Chalke joined in Season 6, Roseanne was the number one comedy in the country, with more than 20 percent of all households tuning in to every episode.
“I remember it spread around our school really quickly because it just sounded like, ‘I’m going to go be on that show and play that person.’ It made no sense,” Chalke, who was just 16 when she won the part, joked.
The intense public backlash to recasting the beloved character almost cost Chalke the job before she filmed a single episode.
The Scrubs star recalled a phone call with producers shortly after her successful audition, during which they told her, “We’re getting cold feet about replacing Becky. So we don’t know if we’re going to do it. If we do it, it’s going to be you, but we’re going to put you on hold for four months. And we’re going to tell you in four months.”
‘My a– is grass,” she remembered thinking.
Even after a grueling audition process that involved a redacted script and taping full scenes with Roseanne Barr in the real production studio with a live laugh track, Chalke hadn’t yet earned the part.
Four months later, however, the show’s producers called to tell her she got the gig. Chalke stayed on the show for four seasons and returned for its 2018 reboot.
“If you’re going to do something for a long period of time, if it’s a comedy, it feels like winning the lottery, because there’s nothing to me like being on a comedy set,” Chalke said.
Four years after Roseanne, Chalke began one of the longest roles of her career as Dr. Elliot Reid for nine seasons on Scrubs.
Now, Chalke is once again returning to a former sitcom, joining Scrubs for its tenth season 16 years later.
She has one trick to get back into character.
“At this point, the line of where Elliot starts and I am, I have no idea,” Chalke said, noting that her character’s trademark klutziness came from her real-life personality.
“That’s just who I am. And I had to call my boss like once a season and be like, ‘Sorry, I’m not going to walk. I’m going to be behind the bed table of the hospital bed because I’m in a cast or a boot or I tripped on a pine cone,’” she said. “And that’s just like also not changed in this iteration.”
“The day before we started shooting the new one, I was hiking with the dogs and I tripped, and I broke my finger and had to come to the first day of work in like a splint,” she said.
“I feel like there’s definitely a lot of me in Elliot and Elliot in me,” she concluded.
All nine episodes of Scrubs season 10 are currently available to stream on Hulu.