Scrubs star Sarah Chalke sat in on a conference call for Sony last week as she promotes her new four-hour miniseries Maneater. Chalke plays a gold-digging socialite who’s after the perfect man, a Hollywood producer whom she’s haven’t even met.
The show will premiere on Lifetime and was adapted from Gigi Levangie Grazer’s New York Times‘ best-selling book of the same name. “I loved that it stayed close to the book because I love the book,” Chalke says. “ I devoured it in one sitting.”
Chalke plays Clarissa Alpert, who is a departure from characters she usually plays, but says the challenge was fun. “There’s so many different parts to the character, which was why I wanted to do it,” she says. “I really felt like there were a lot of parts of Clarissa that I hadn’t gotten to do before.”
Fashion plays a big role in the show, as Clarissa is the typical trendy LA girl. “I was actually drooling when I read the script, because you could tell already that the fashion was going to be an actual character in the movie,” says Chalke who lists Zac Posen and Monique Lhuilier as two of her favorite designers.
When asked about similarities between herself and Clarissa, she playfully replies, “We’re both planning a wedding, but I met my fiancé through friends on a ski trip and she stalked hers and picked him out and planned a wedding before she even met him.”
“I got to try on a ton of these beautiful Monique Lhuillier wedding dresses,” Chalke says. “I loved the one I got to wear so much that I asked the costumer, ‘What do you think if I get married in this one, and we find a different one for the movie?'”
As for differences between the down-to-earth Chalke and her prissier counterpart, she says, “I’m from Canada, and it’s certainly not how I grew up. Clarissa has the right hair, makeup, and clothes…we grew up in hand-me-downs and we owned one hairbrush.”
Of course, she couldn’t go the whole interview without addressing the ever-popular Scrubs. Despite its constant ambiguous future, the show got picked up for a ninth season, although Chalke’s involvement isn’t quite defined yet. “I’m so glad that it got picked up, because I think for us on Scrubs pretty much since Season 4 we really never knew the future,” she says. “It wasn’t ever something we really got to settle into…it kind of kept everyone grateful because we had the attitude of ‘this could be it, let’s just enjoy it.'”
So will Dr. Elliot Reid be back next season? “I actually don’t know yet what I’m going to do, but I will very soon,” she replies. “Regardless, I’m just so excited that the show got picked up again, and it’s going to go for another year.”
She goes on, “For me it was the best job I’ve had. I think we just all felt really lucky to have that rare combination of enjoying your character and loving the writing, but also really liking the people you work with. I think for that to last for this long is pretty rare.”
Chalke gives the series finale (which turned out not to be the series finale) a thumbs up. “I love the finale. I’m a romantic at heart. I always thought J.D. and Elliot should wind up together,” Chalke reveals. “I was really happy with the way the finale ended. I thought it was really cool, kind of sort of getting to see a little bit into the future, and I love that all the guest stars came back.”
As for Maneater, is there a possibility of it getting picked up as a series? “I don’t know what will happen, she says. “I know that’s sort of the direction that The Starter Wife (also written by Gigi Levangie Grazer) went in, and I thought they did such a great job with that. I guess we’ll just see how it does in a couple of weeks.”
Tune in to watch Sarah Chalke in Maneater on Saturday, May 30 and Sunday, May 31 at 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on Lifetime.
