Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has shared a detailed update on the show’s reboot, revealing it will centre around the hospital buddies Zach Braff’s JD and Donald Faison’s Turk, 15 years on.
The hit US sitcom, which ran from 2001 to 2010, follows a group of interns and their journey to becoming doctors at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital. Braff played newbie JD as he navigated the ups and downs of modern healthcare while desperately trying to win the approval of his ruthless higher-up Dr Cox (John C McGinley).
Bill Lawrence, who created the original series and will act as executive producer on the reboot, has been working on making the reunion series happen in recent years, but it has faced delays due to Lawrence’s five-year writing contract with Warner Bros, which began in 2022. Scrubs is produced by Disney’s 20th Television.
However, in a new interview with TV Line, Lawrence seemed confident that plans were going ahead – saying the reboot would follow-up with characters JD and Turk, who were best known for their brotherly banter while training together.
Lawrence revealed that the most difficult part of recreating that dynamic is that the characters have aged, so their “goofy youthfulness” will have changed.
“The hardest part is that Zach and Donald have aged,” Lawrence said. “People still have that affinity, and love, for that goofy youthfulness. But if I saw two guys in their late 40s/50s doing ‘World’s Most Giant Doctor,’ and carrying each other around all the time, I would go, ‘What the f*** is going on,’ you know?”
He said that the objective of the show is “see what that [friendship] looks like at their age, and [take] a comedic look at what medicine has become since those kids started out as interns”.
Lawrence added that he he hopes to establish where all the characters are in their lives, even if those actors do not return for the reboot.
That includes Sarah Chalke’s Dr Elliott Reid, Judy Reyes’s Nurse Carla Espinosa, John C McGinley’s Dr Perry Cox, Neil Flynn as The Janitor, and Ken Jenkins’s Dr Bob Kelso.
Braff previously revealed that the reboot will showcase a version of his character JD who has been “beaten down by the system” over the last 15 years.
Lawrence said he wants to “look at how the system not only changed, but how it has beaten some of these people down, and how they retain their optimism with a new wave of young characters”.
Lawrence added that he hopes that Ken Jenkins, 84, who played chief of medicine Dr Bob Kelso, will return for the series.
The reboot will be without Sam Lloyd, who played the bumbling lawyer Ted Buckland in the sitcom, who died in 2020 after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and lung cancer.
Lawrence said: “I hope Ken is able to come play with us a little bit. He’s a little older, but we love him so much. The only bummer, obviously, is that Sam Lloyd was such a huge part of the show, and he passed on.”
Last year, it was reported that while the cast and creators were enthusiastic about the reboot but Lawrence’s contractual obligations to Warner Bros posed difficulty. However, in December, reports suggested that the Emmy winner was developing the show with ABC Studios, according to Variety. Although Lawrence remained under his deal with Warner Bros TV, the studio appears to be carving out room for him to work with his former Scrubs writers and a new showrunner.
