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Scrubs star Sarah Chalke talks almost missing out on the role

From Digital Spy

Despite lending her voice to Beth Smith for Adult Swim's brilliantly random animation Rick and Morty, Sarah Chalke will perhaps always be best known for her role as Elliot Reid in Scrubs – but it turns out she very nearly missed out on the part altogether.

Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, the actress revealed that her plans to go and see a show with a friend the night before her audition almost got in the way of her preparation.

While she was determined not to cancel her plans, a late night read-through of the pilot hours before the audition made her realise just how much she wanted the role.

Photo credit: Mike Coppola - Getty Images
Photo credit: Mike Coppola - Getty Images

Related: Scrubs is returning, but not in the way you might think

"With the Scrubs pilot, I'd just moved to LA a couple of months before with my best friend," Chalke told us. "We didn't know anyone. We never had any plans. We had plans to go to a show, and I got two auditions for the next morning.

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"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. And I was like, 'I'm not cancelling. I'm not cancelling these plans. Whatever these two auditions are, I’m not cancelling these plans'."

Photo credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images / Brian Ach/Getty Images for Access Emanate
Photo credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images / Brian Ach/Getty Images for Access Emanate

She continued: "I got home at midnight, and I read the Scrubs pilot, and I was like, 'Oh, shit. This is really, really, really good. I want this so badly!'" she laughed. "And the audition was at 9am. So I thought, 'OK, 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, showrunner] called me and was like, 'You’ve got it'."

Chalke went on to explain the long audition process for the show, revealing that they had to go in four separate times to perform in front of Bill Lawrence, the casting director, the studio (Touchstone and ABC) and the network (ABC).

"It was a bit of a long, drawn-out process. I remember just feeling like, I thought I was maybe dreaming when I got that phone call," she said.

Asked about her favourite moments of her career so far, Chalke said: "I feel really lucky because when you read a script and you're excited about it – that was certainly the feeling that I had when I read the Scrubs pilot, and the feeling I had when I read the Rick and Morty pilot, and the feeling that I had when I read this Netflix series that I just did called Firefly Lane which is coming out in the fall.

Photo credit: Chris Haston/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Photo credit: Chris Haston/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

"You kind of get goosebumps, and you think, 'Oh my gosh, I hope this works. I hope we get to do this for a while.' But you never know, right? Because it's such a combination of timing and so many factors that go into it. You know when you read something and you love it, but you don't know how it’ll be received."

On getting the part of Beth for Rick and Morty, she added: "I loved the script. I was auditioning from a friend's cabin for the call back. Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon called me.

"They were having me read, and they were giving me notes over the phone. There were dogs barking in the background, and people running around, and kids. I was just thinking, 'I can't even hear myself think! And I really want to get this part!'"


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