Scrubs Stars Braff, Faison & Chalke on Being "Bosses" This Time Around

Posted in: ABC, TV | Tagged: Scrubs

Scrubs Stars Braff, Faison & Chalke on Being "Bosses" This Time Around

Scrubs stars/EPs Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke on the added pressure of making the ABC revival succeed, Bill Lawrence, and more.

Published Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:38:09 -0500
by Tom Chang
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It was a far different time when Bill Lawrence created Scrubs on NBC 25 years ago in 2001 with the fresh-faced trio of stars Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke as interns: doctors John "J.D." Dorian, Christopher Turk, and Elliot Reid as the core trio of the medical sitcom, acclimating to life at Sacred Heart with a robust ensemble cast that allowed everyone their chance to shine. Things, however, are dramatically different following the series initial cancellation in 2010. The entire cast moved on, but the idea lingered and was bolstered by the close friendship of Braff and Faison, who hosted a Scrubs rewatch podcast called Fake Doctors, Real Friends to discuss the NBC/ABC sitcom and how its legion of fans never went away despite the maligned ninth season, and Lawrence, by then, had already built a TV empire with multiple shows on Apple TV and HBO Max, with his biggest hits: Ted Lasso, Rooster, and Shrinking. By bringing back Scrubs, he would initially task Aseem Batra and Tim Hobert with showrunning before Batra eventually went solo and brought back Braff, Faison, and Chalke as executive producers as an extra incentive and trust, given their familiarity. Braff spoke with PEOPLE about how their growth helped make the revival what it is today, with its second season (11th overall).

Scrubs Stars/EPs Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke on Thriving Under Pressure for the Revival Series Success

"It used to be we had this sugar daddy named Bill Lawrence, and we just showed up, and this brilliant showrunner told us what to say. We did our best to make it funny, and then he did everything else," Braff said. The actor-director noted back then, "We didn't have the weight of making this work on our shoulders as we do now. Every single scene we do, we all know has to be great. We have to do the team bonding and the cast bonding and make sure that everyone's behaving themselves and making sure that we turn up prepared. We're the bosses now with some great help from people like Aseem Batra, who's our showrunner, but the pressure is way more on us now than it used to be."

Faison admits that during the original series run, he "was just there to do my job, but now I feel the pressure. Season 1 was great. Season 2 has to be better. We want it to be better for the fans, mostly, but for us also. I use sci-fi analogies, but Star Wars came out, and it was a good movie, but then 'The Empire Strikes Back' took it to another level, and we want to do that type of thing. Aliens was a good movie. 'Alien' was a good movie, but 'Aliens' was a great one. We want to do that as we continue forward."

Chalke also embraced the lifelong friendships she made on Scrubs, "When do you get to work with people that you've known for 25 years?" We had such a good experience in the first round; it was eight years, and to get to do it again with your friends is so lucky," adding, since the original series, "we've just had so much more life" and "these guys make me laugh harder than anyone…It's super lucky just as friends, but also to do a show, a comedy where you're doing with your friends, it ends up being really great because you feel like you can do anything. If you screw up, if you try something that's ridiculous, nobody will care. So I feel like it frees you up to actually try anything. I think that's where the cool stuff happens in comedy, so it feels super lucky."

For more, check out the full interview. Scrubs, which also stars Ava Bunn, Vanessa Bayer, Jacob Dudman, David Gridley, Layla Mohammadi, Amanda Morrow, Michael James Scott, Rachel Bilson, Scott Foley, John Higgins, and Tamera Mowry-Housley, airs Wednesdays on ABC.

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