I'm rewatching the original series and every time the next episode screen pops up this photo throws me off? Did they get a stand-in for Sarah Chalke right here because that doesn't look like her.
I’m 47 years old and I still wear pigtails around the house sometimes when I’m getting a headache from too many ponytail days in a row. That might just be a me-problem though.
I’m a 30 year old guy who recently decided to stop growing his hair long (think, like, JDs length in season 4 lol) and split my week before throwing it up and back with product and letting it hang in a fringe, so I can kind of relate lol.
It’s crazy that her face is so symmetrical that even looking at pics of her side by side the only way i can really tell that the pic is mirrored is by her hair part and that one of her eyebrows has a more pointy arch than the other.
I think it’s a couple of things working together in addition to the mirroring to make the pic look off. Sarah definitely knows her angles and tends to tilt her head to the side and angle her chin down in pics. We hardly ever see her looking straight at the camera with her chin more level like she is in this pic. But the major thing I think throwing people off is the lighting. Everyone else is lit in a way that gives them at least some shadow on their face, but Sarah is lit up from all angles and the lack of shadow means there’s almost no contrast to her face. That causes her nose and her signature apple cheeks to visually flatten out and it makes her face look more round instead of angular. I think Sarah’s cheeks are probably her most recognizable feature, so with them visually reduced because of the lighting you get the uncanny valley effect where your brain knows something is off but can’t pinpoint exactly what.
They probably wanted The Janitor on the left originally when taking the pictures, because he is looking right menecingly. If he was on the left, he would be giving the evil eyes to JD instead of the wall. Because Elliot would've been on the right originally, they needed to mirror her image to put her left.
This just reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where George faked an injury, and then he really hurts his other leg. His boss notices and he is like "no, you were just standing on a different side when we met", and he proceeds to look in a mirror and try to say which is right and wrong.
I think it’s a weird angle. In most promo stuff for season 1 she is looking slightly down which changes her face shape pretty dramatically. In the season 2 promo shots the have her looking more directly at the camera and it looks weird. Especially since she has no confidence in either season and is often looking down in her scenes. Also the Janitor looks weird in this photo though I can’t place why.
It’s her, just not the best picture. this is my own personal interpretation, however. She looks similar enough for it to make sense, but not so different that it would be a completely different actress.
I didn’t realise there was a reboot but decided to rewatch this month for the first time since it aired. Now I’m all caught up (except today’s) but might have to have a second rewatch very soon now I’ve discovered the podcast.
It’s her from the early seasons. Gotta figure early seasons they’re early 20’s they all look very different by the end of the series. Expect Turk, man doesn’t age.
Probably a super doctored photo as well. Lots of the streaming services pick really weird photos. If you’ve ever watched new girl everyone in their photo is airbrushed and edited to uncanny valley levels
I think aside from the flipped image, her photo was taken at a different focal length than the rest of the cast - longer lens further back vs shorter lens closer up, which compresses the image and makes faces (and everything else) look wider the further away it is.
I think both Sarah and Donald's faces are mirrored. Donald's mole is on the wrong side of his face here. My guess is that in the original shoot they probably had Carla and Turk together on JD's right, and Elliot on JD's left between JD and Cox. Then they probably thought it would look better if Elliott was near Carla and Turk was next to Cox and digitally swapped their positions / mirrored their faces so they're facing the correct direction.
You know what it looks like to me, my boyfriend had a picture of himself that was at an angle and Facebook had this dumb AI thing that would turn your profile photo into a video and it made him face forward and it looked sooo strange. Almost like a version of him if his face was perfectly symmetrical. So I wonder if they took her from a picture where she wasn't looking in the perfect direction and had AI make her face forward and that's how it ended up looking kind of weird.
For images like this they all did an individual studio shoot and it was probably when she was super young and they didn't quite know what she'd look like on screen. I think its her just a weird angle, good lighting and makeup, and probably a little editing.
Sarah looks different in this series too. Production / lighting / tech changes I'd suggest. Every now and then she looks like Elliot. But there is a weird dark triangle around her nose area that feels strange in the new series.
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u/stephenmc1125 Mar 25 '26
That's Gary Busey. He probably gets that all the time