Zach Braff has said that he and the cast of Scrubs were “exhausted” by the end of the final season, admitting that they started to repeat certain jokes.
Braff, who played J.D. on the medical sitcom that aired from 2001 to 2010, said that he and his costars – Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes and Christa Miller – were “kind of fried” by season 9.
“I miss laughing every day. Belly laughing every day was – that was the job. And when that goes away, by the time nine years were over, we were sort of all exhausted by it,” Braff said on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast on August 13.
“We were starting to repeat jokes. Everyone’s pretty fried,” he recalled of the role, which earned him three Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nod. “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.”
However, while stressing that concluding the series in 2010 was the right decision, Braff said that he’d definitely be open to revisiting Sacred Heart Hospital at some point in the future.
“But now looking back, and there’s talk of reboots, and that’s a conversation, I think, ‘Oh my gosh. Being able to laugh – belly laugh – with these people again, would be a lot of fun,'” he said.
Admitting that the show “changed my whole life,” Braff then shared his conditions for a potential reboot of Scrubs.
“When we signed up to do our show, they can put you under a pretty insane contract of, like, seven years and stuff, which was… which I wouldn’t do [again],” he said. “But some sort of a limited thing? You’re basically saying, ‘Do you wanna go get the gang back together and fucking laugh your ass off with some of your best friends and be paid well?’ Yeah, that sounds amazing.”
Talk of a Scrubs reboot has come up before. During a cast panel at the ATX TV Festival in 2022, creator Bill Lawrence said he was “going to do it,” when asked about the possibility of returning to the sitcom.
“We are going to do it — because we are lucky enough that people care,” he said. “If you ever have an excuse to work with people that you would want to spend time with anyways — run to it. It’s the greatest thing about this gift.”
Faison, who played Dr. Chris Turk, said that they “all would love to work together again” but suggested it would have to be a movie due to Lawrence’s availability.
“It’s just that — it can’t be a full season of a show,” he said during the panel. “It would have to be a movie or something where you could only get a couple of months to it — because everyone else is doing something. [Lawrence] is never going to be free again.”
Braff added of Lawrence at the panel: “We can’t possibly do anything else without the Wonder Kid here. And he is a little bit busy [with Ted Lasso]. If he finds time, I would definitely be down to do it.”
Earlier this month, Lawrence said the show could come back in “six months to a year” because the cast feel they have “stories to tell”.
“We’ve been talking about it,” he told The Independent. “We all spend time with each other in real life, but everybody is so talented from that show that they’re all working.
“We’ve really started to entertain the idea about getting the band back together because we all feel like we do have some stories to tell. People in the medical community are heroes right now. They certainly aren’t doing it for the money! It’s been a crazy rough time, so I would not be surprised if we figure something out in the next six months to a year.”
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