“We’re gonna do it, you guys know,” Lawrence said during a Scrubs reunion panel at the ATX TV Festival in 2022. “If you ever have an excuse to work with people you want to spend time with anyway, run to it.”
Despite the buy-in from those involved, the road to the ABC project hasn’t been easy. Lawrence currently has a lucrative deal at Warner Bros. TV and is juggling four series—Shrinking, Bad Monkey and the return of Ted Lasso on Apple TV+, along with an HBO comedy series starring Steve Carell—for the studio. WBTV agreed to an exception in his deal that allows him to work on Scrubs at 20th Street (whose predecessor Touchstone TV produced the original), though he won’t be showrunner when it comes to series.
Braff is the first member of the original Scrubs cast to join the ABC update. The series also starred Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes, John C. McGinley, Neil Flynn and Ken Jenkins.
Braff and Lawrence have continued to work together since Scrubs wrapped its first series: Braff directed episodes of Shrinking and Ted Lasso (for which he earned Emmy and Directors Guild Award nominations) and guest-starred on Bad Monkey and Cougar Town.
