Zach Braff Says ‘Scrubs’ Was Repeating Jokes & Cast Was Exhausted by Final Season
Zach Braff waxes nostalgic about Scrubs, but he does say the cast was “fried” by the end of the NBC-turned-ABC show’s nine-season run.
On a new episode of Michael Rosenbuam’s Inside of You podcast, Braff said he misses “aspects” of filming the medical comedy. “I miss laughing every day,” he explained. “Belly laughing every day was the job.”
Eventually, though, the grind of production took its toll. “By the time nine years were over, we were sort of all exhausted by it, just the hours of it,” Braff said. “I felt like, at the time, we were starting to repeat jokes. Everyone was pretty fried.”
He went on: “This was back in the day … where, like, we would do insane hours that people don’t even do anymore. We didn’t really have much of a life outside of it. So we were just kind of fried, you know?”
NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection
Braff also acknowledged the “conversation” around a possible Scrubs reboot or revival. “I think, oh my gosh, being able to laugh with these people, belly laugh with these people again, would be a lot of fun,” he said.
Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence weighed in on that possibility in a new Variety interview. “It’s fascinating to me that the passion for Scrubs has, I’m so grateful, never died,” he said. “Maybe it’s because Zach and [costar] Donald [Faison] are such friends in real life and doing their podcast [Fake Doctors, Real Friends] and those T-Mobile commercials. None of us really need it, and that’s probably the biggest barrier to entry — everybody’s super successful, so talented and lovely.”
The prospect of more Scrubs is also complicated, as Variety notes, because it’s a Disney-owned show and Lawrence has a deal with Warner Bros.
“The business part of it can always get mucked up. But I’m super hopeful,” Lawrence added. “It would be fun to do not just because we want an excuse to hang out with each other, but because it’d be fun to do creatively. You don’t want to just mail it in. But it would be interesting to see those characters older and see what new young kids look like in medicine right now, because it is a heroic profession, and no one’s doing it to get rich.”
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