Her new show and why her guest role on \u2018Grey\u2019s\u2019 was one of the \u2018hardest things\u2019 she’s done<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lie Shia Ong Sarah Chalke has been making TV audiences laugh with her\ncharacters on \u201cRoseanne\u201d and \u201cScrubs\u201d through the years. Now the actress is\nback with a new comedy called \u201cHow to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of\nYour Life),\u201d which premieres on ABC on April 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chalke plays newly-divorced mom Polly who takes her\ndaughter Natalie and moves back in with her mom, Elaine (Elizabeth Perkins),\nand stepdad, Max (Brad Garrett). Polly doesn\u2019t exactly see eye-to-eye with her\nparents when it comes to raising Natalie. Elaine and Max are eccentric and have\na more hands-off parenting approach, whereas Polly tries to be the perfect,\norganized mom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV spoke with the actress about her new show and also\nabout her guest-starring role on Thursday\u2019s \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy.\u201d The episode,\nwhich raises awareness about Kawasaki disease, is something very important to\nChalke, because her own son was diagnosed with it at age 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV: Your fans\nare so excited to see you back on the air with a new show. What can they expect\nfrom \u201cHow to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sarah Chalke: I\u2019m so excited about it. We had the best\ntime filming it. With that cast I feel so damn lucky. I fell in love with the\nscript. First of all I fell in love with Claudia [Lonow], who is the writer and\ncreator of the show. It\u2019s extremely funny, and I met her first. It\u2019s about her\nlife, and it\u2019s her true life story. I play her. What I loved about [the show\nwas] that it made me laugh out loud and it also pulled at your heartstrings. I\nlove that balance it had between being really funny and also really drawing you into these people\u2019s lives. I loved Claudia\nand I loved the script, and then they hadn\u2019t cast anyone else at that point,\nand you never know who you\u2019ll get to work with. And then that was just such a\nhuge bonus. It\u2019s been an incredible cast to work with. Brad is one of the\nfunniest people I\u2019ve ever worked with. Elizabeth is amazing. I was a huge fan\nof hers from \u201cWeeds,\u201d and I couldn\u2019t believe it when they were offering her the\npart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026 and then Claudia\u2019s background is stand-up and her\nparents co-owned the Improv, and so she grew up in the stand-up world doing\nstand-up herself around a lot of stand-up comedians. So Brad Garrett is from\nstand-up. She hired Jon Dore as my ex-husband, and he\u2019s from stand-up. Joe\nWengert who plays my boss is from stand-up \u2026 and so it\u2019s just one of the\nfunniest groups of people I\u2019ve ever worked with and hung out with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For your character\nof Polly, did you also draw upon your own experiences as a mom to develop her\npersonality?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Totally. It\u2019s one of the parts I\u2019ve played I can relate\nto the most. When you have a kid it kind of changes the lens through which you\nsee the world. You just want to be the best mom to your kid. That\u2019s really the\ndriving force for Polly. She\u2019s just trying to figure out, \u201cHow do I do this,\nand how do I be this great mom for my kid?\u201d She\u2019s also trying to figure out how\nto have a life in terms of going back to the dating world and finding a job. So\nyeah, it\u2019s definitely cool to get to play a mom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You mentioned\nworking with Brad Garrett and Elizabeth Perkins. People will also remember you\nfrom your \u201cRoseanne\u201d days working with Roseanne Barr and John Goodman. Which\nset of parents would you say are kookier? Elaine and Max or Roseanne and Dan?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [Laughs] That\u2019s a great question! They are very\ndifferent. One interesting similarity between the \u201cRoseanne\u201d show and \u201cHow to\nLive \u2026\u201d what was neat about the \u201cRoseanne\u201d show working on it at the time is\nthat it really pushed the envelope and sort of tackled some interesting\nsubjects and that was sort of Roseanne herself saying \u201cI want to tackle this. I\nwant to have the first lesbian kiss on television. I want to have this. I want\nto deal with x, y, z.\u201d It was neat to see where the show went when we were\nfilming \u201cHow to Live \u2026\u201d and the different topics they would tackle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We did this one episode on what it\u2019s like to try and\nraise a kid together when you\u2019re divorced. [My daughter] Natalie starts saying,\n\u201cHow do we do this? Why can\u2019t we do things all together?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We also did this episode where I try and set up my\nex-husband on a date because my daughter says, \u201cWell you\u2019re dating, and I want\ndaddy to be happy too.\u201d So I try to set him up and it kind of ends up\nbackfiring. It was fun to sort of see the different directions that they took,\nand I felt a couple times it reminded me of working on the \u201cRoseanne\u201d show in\nterms of the show pushes the envelope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any funny\nbehind-the-scenes stories you can share with the fans from filming?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There were definitely times working with that many\nstand-up comedians in one room where we just can\u2019t get through takes. I\u2019ve\nnever laughed harder. When I start laughing and it was late in the day, and\nyou\u2019ve worked a lot of hours, you\u2019ve had too much coffee, there were times\nwhere I had to say \u201cBrad can you not say that one line? Because I can\u2019t get\nthrough the take.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We just had the wrap party, and it was the longest gag\nreel that I\u2019ve ever seen from any show. It was just constantly people losing\nit, losing it, losing it. [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a ridiculously fun working environment. It\u2019s the\nbest for doing comedy because when you\u2019re having the most fun is when you\u2019re\nmost creative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not that\nuncommon for grown-up kids these days to move back in with their parents. Now\nthat you\u2019ve done this show, do you have any wise advice for people who may be\nexperiencing those living arrangements now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What I loved about the show and how they put it is,\nClaudia always said between her and her parents they make one responsible\nparent. Polly, because of the mother she did have, she wants to be the mother\nshe never had, but because of the mother she did have, she has to go to her\nmother and get her help. I think what lies at the bottom of this is yes, they\nhave very different parenting philosophies. Her parents have this much more\nlaid-back philosophy. They take Natalie to the Hawaiian Jazz Festival, and they\nactually lose her by accident. Polly is much more trying to do the helicopter\nparenting style and micromanage everything and be sort of this type A perfect\nmom, and she realizes she\u2019s not and that\u2019s OK. At the bottom of it they all\nreally care about each other and that it takes a village to raise a kid, and\nthey\u2019ve got a pretty cool village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re also guest\nstarring on the episode of \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d this Thursday, and I understand\nfans should have their tissues ready.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It was definitely one of the hardest things I\u2019ve ever\ndone. It was a big decision to do it. At the end of the day the scales just\ntipped in terms of just going through something like that and feeling like we\ngot lucky and our son is OK. He got the treatment late. It was really important\nto me to raise awareness because there is a treatment you can get to save your\nkid\u2019s heart, but you only have a 10-day window to get this treatment. It\u2019s\nbasically called IVIG. It\u2019s a high dose of immunoglobulin, so they get this IV\n12-hour drip that is a product that\u2019s made from 10,000 people\u2019s blood that\u2019s\nbeen donated. It makes heart damage not happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was really scary to do. I was nervous about what the\nexperience was going to be like to walk onto the set and hold a kid who was\nmade up to look like my son did. It\u2019s very visual. You get this high fever and\neverything goes red. You\u2019ve got these red blood-shot eyes and red tongue, red\nthroat and red hands and feet. So I was nervous about what the experience was\ngoing to be like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was interesting the morning I started \u2014 and it was\nliterally 5 in the morning and I had jumped out of the shower to go to work \u2014\nand I had gotten this email from my Kawasaki doctor, Dr. Jane Burns, who\u2019s one\nof the world-leading expert researchers on the disease. I didn\u2019t know her\nduring our experience. We found her since. She said one of her Kawasaki\npatients\u2019 mother had emailed her, and her son had been cast to play my son. It\nwas complete coincidence. They cast one of her triplets, and they had had KD a\nyear ago. No one knew. The casting department didn\u2019t know. It was just a total\ncoincidence. I just felt like it was a sign and it was meant to be. The chances\nof that happening are zero. It\u2019s been a powerful experience already and it\nhasn\u2019t aired yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026 I have had such an overwhelming response from other\nparents saying, \u201cThank you for raising awareness about this,\u201d or \u201cI had KD or\nmy kid had KD or my kid died of it in my arms. Thank you for doing this.\u201d\nObviously it was a tough decision to do it in the first place, but I feel like\nthat\u2019s been a really great thing to have that response from parents. But really\nthe drive behind doing it was how do we raise awareness for something that\nneeds awareness? It\u2019s rare. People don\u2019t know about it. It\u2019s treatable. It can\nsave a kid\u2019s life. What can we do? \u2026 My Kawasaki doctor told me if we do an\nepisode about it, the show will save a life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something called the KDFoundation.org and which\nis a great website, and it\u2019s the website that saved my son. It\u2019s where we had\nread the symptoms online and as a result kept fighting for him to get seen by a\nspecialist. It laid out exactly what we had. The \u201cGrey\u2019s\u201d episode called \u201cCan\u2019t\nFight This Feeling,\u201d what I loved about it is it gives a message whether it\u2019s\nKD or whether it\u2019s something else, fight for your kid. If you have a feeling,\nif you have this gut feeling, a parent knows. Just advocate for your kid. Don\u2019t\nfeel bad to go and get a second, third, fifth, sixth opinion because it doesn\u2019t\nhurt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Her new show and why her guest role on \u2018Grey\u2019s\u2019 was one of the \u2018hardest things\u2019 she’s done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msn-entertainment","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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