13 min readIT’S BEEN SIXTEEN years since Scrubs left the air, but Zach Braff and Donald Faison never left each other. After nine seasons together as besties J.D. and Turk, the doctor-surgeon duo have remained extremely close—both geographically and emotionally. Not long after the show’s goodbye, Faison got married in Braff’s backyard. Then Braff became godfather to Faison’s two youngest children. Over the last decade, they’ve shown up to act in each other’s various movie and TV projects, found homes just streets apart, and began a Scrubs rewatch podcast at the start of the pandemic, revisiting and commenting on all 182 episodes.
Their initial spark came during the show’s very first table read in 2001. But they forged a real connection once inside the show’s central setting of Sacred Heart Hospital, navigating its patient-filled halls with an affectionate, outward “bromance”—one atypical of most early-aughts sitcoms. Though the show had many pleasures along its initial 10-year run (like its fantasy sequences and moments of pathos), its legacy is still defined by its most consistent story beat: J.D. and Turk’s platonic love for each other. Throughout it all, the guys hugged it out, shared their emotions, and broadened ideas of on-screen male friendship.
Now, after reconvening for a couple musical T-Mobile ads (a soft-launch of the show’s return), J.D. and Turk are back at Sacred Heart—this time as more distinguished mentors to a young crop of doctors. The long-awaited Scrubs revival, produced by creator Bill Lawrence and showrun by Aseem Batra, keeps its humorous heart by leaning into its main characters’ middle-aged realities and a new generation’s sensitivities and social media proclivities. But if there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s J.D. and Turk’s relationship. It’s become so strong, in fact, that in the first episode Turk can telepathically sense the exact moment his old friend enters the hospital.
“We've never really tested that [ourselves],” Faison tells Braff on a recent Zoom call with Men’s Health. “I want to test that now!”
“Well, Donald really believes in The Force,” Braff says with a laugh.
The interaction is just a small window into what it’s like when a pair of friends with a quarter century of history get together again. Much like their characters, Braff and Faison spend the majority of the conversation stoking playful confrontation, escaping down tangents, and learning new things about each other—like when Braff remembers that Faison’s 10-year-old daughter, Wilder, was recently worried about becoming “hairy” like Braff.
“Why the fuck does Wilder think I'm hairy?” Braff asks.
“Because you've got hair on your head, man,” Faison replies, before gesturing to his dome. “Do I have hair on my head?”
With Scrubs now in the midst of its return season after more than 15 years off the air, Men’s Health spoke with the duo about their experiences in reviving old characters, the joy of working together again and maintaining a friendship, and how they see their characters in a new age of hospital shows.
MEN’S HEALTH: What has it been like to revisit Scrubs after a 16-year gap?
DONALD FAISON: It's wonderful. It felt like a comfortable slipper, how you can just slide right into it. As an actor, it was more than I had been given emotionally in a lot of other projects. We've worked really hard since 2020 to try and get this back. 2020 was the jump-off where it was like, this actually could happen—from the podcast to the T-Mobile commercials. Bill Lawrence has been saying it the longest: “We're going to get this thing back.” And we finally did it. I didn't have much to do with the preparation other than showing up. Zach did a lot of the work.
ZACH BRAFF: That's true.
MH: Was it the same feeling for you, Zach?
ZB: It was a lot different. Donald and I had the luxury of spending all that time re-watching 180 episodes, and it was really informative. We weren't doing it with the plan of thinking about how to reboot the show; We were just doing it to entertain each other and hopefully some fans, and it built a really big following. That definitely informed how we were going to do it when we came back. We kind of said, “Wow, look how broad the show got.” Some people loved that. We loved it. Some of it's off the rails and surreal. But, I think along with Bill and Aseem, the idea was to ground the show. Let's save that trippy stuff for fantasies, and let's make sure the show itself is always grounded in reality. We only had six days to shoot [the pilot]. It was a lot to accomplish.
MH: When you were re-watching the show in the midst of COVID for the podcast, what was it like viewing hospital workers in a comedic light while the healthcare world was going through a crisis?
DF: When we started the podcast, we weren't expecting COVID to happen.
ZB: Well, we recorded our first podcast on the first day of the shutdown.
DF: That automatically atoned for a lot of things, because first responders were thrust into the spotlight. And what is our show but honoring first responders? Like Zach said, we were expecting to do a podcast and maybe our family would listen to it. That's pretty much it.
2020 definitely shifted my personal view of first responders. I played one on television, but I never in a million years thought they would ever be spotlighted like that. And it was very heroic.
ZB: It made me completely rethink that we were playing superheroes. We're not just playing doctors—we're playing doctors who are particularly good at what they do and are particularly good teachers. That's three times the fun: To get to play someone who's not only a brilliant doctor, but who's so good at passing on what they know to the next generation. I'm way more aware of how heroic that is this time around.
MH: So you are Superman, unlike the theme song, in this situation.
ZB: I think they are. I really do. Noah Wyle is on The Pitt saving lives one after the other. Our show isn’t ER-based, but there are emergencies. It's more often like cracking the code of what could possibly be wrong with this person and dealing with their families and keeping everyone hopeful and running. Not to mention that now in this new incarnation, Turk is the Chief of Surgery. I'm the Chief of Medicine. We're running whole departments. I really do believe these people are superheroes.
DF: Zach and Donald believe these people are superheroes, but I don't think J.D. and Turk look at themselves as superheroes. They're very much in it and aren't even debating.
ZB: Yeah, but they both know they're pretty good at it. They wouldn't call themselves heroes, but they wouldn't be in their positions if they weren't skilled.
DF: I agree with that. There's no need to debate who's the GOAT, but I think Todd is…
ZB: They're all GOATs. Part of the funny Scrubs lore is that Todd is the best surgeon in the hospital.
MH: Is there a tangible difference between hanging out as Zack and Donald and hanging out as J.D. and Turk? Are there noticeable differences in those relationships themselves? Or do you feel so immersed with each other that it’s too blurry to tell?
DF: The lines are definitely blurred now. I would say Turk and J.D. are the completely turned-up version of who we are. Like, if you dial it all the way.
ZB: We're very silly, and we will call each other and get into a debate about the end of La La Land. I mean, that's really funny.
MH: Is this a recent debate?
DF: No, it's an ongoing debate. My wife just threw something into the pot that turned it upside down.
ZB: You don't want to go there. Men’s Health doesn't want to go down this road. My point is, that is real life, but then J.D. and Turk are obviously an amped up version of it for TV. But it has a lot to do with our lives.
MH: Zach, you were briefly in Donald's show, The Exes, and Donald, you show up in Zach’s movie Wish I Was Here. But outside of some one-off collaborations, you hadn’t worked together much before your podcast. After the show ended, what was that creative gap like? How did that change the dynamic of your relationship?
DF: I think it made our relationship stronger. Because then it became, “We don't have to work together, but we can still root for each other.”
ZB: There was always a curiosity. We just found each other to be really good comedy partners and it's a really good chemistry between us. That's something you're very lucky to find, and it's not something you're going to find everywhere. When you make a movie with a romance storyline and you go test it, the audience is always saying, “Get to the meet-cute quicker.” “It took too long for Natalie Portman to arrive on screen [in Garden State]. Get there quicker!” I can feel that when I edit these episodes of Scrubs. You're laughing and you're laughing, but the audience—and me, as a voice for the audience—is like, “All right, quick, get J.D. and Turk together.” That's the heart of the show, you know?
MH: What was the biggest perk of working on a TV series with your best friend? How helpful was it to vent to each other and be around someone you trusted?
DF: We were really young. I think we learned a lot more off camera than we did on camera, as far as navigating Hollywood.
ZB: Also, Donald had been successful. I had done a couple of things, but I was waiting tables whereas Donald had done some big movies. My life changed 180 degrees overnight. I think he and Bill Lawrence were really helpful in figuring out what a big shift my life had taken.
MH: Donald has spoken about realizing you were friends while playing ping-pong in your underwear in your New York loft. Was that a simultaneous realization?
ZB: That summer was really special because it was out of a movie. I mean, we literally said “Let's get in a loft like Tom Hanks had in Big.”
DF: And then all of us cut to the montage.
ZB: We literally manifested a giant SoHo loft like in Big: “Oh, my God, maybe there'll be bunk beds. Maybe there'll be a trampoline.”
DF: He got that loft for $230. That's the crazy thing. That was his paycheck.
ZB: It was a dream. It was every young actor's fantasy: He was making a movie, I was doing Shakespeare in the Park, we lived in a SoHo loft together. All we had were two beds and a ping-pong table. I had some of the most fond memories of my life that summer. I remember Michelle Branch's song, [sings] “You're EV-ERY-WHERE to Meeee.” I had the yellow CD Walkman thing. Remember that Sony yellow one?
DF: Yeah, it couldn't shake and break.
ZB: I would just bop down the street, cranking Michelle Branch. [Sings] “Turn it inside out so I can see….”
MH: Michelle Branch is the best time machine to that era. She was all over the radio.
ZB: Picture me with my yellow discman bopping down the streets of SoHo, listening to “Everywhere.”
DF: With a hit show on the air.
ZB: With a hit show on the air. Headed to rehearsal for Shakespeare in the Park. Oh, my dream life.
MH: At the time when you were doing that, did it feel like a dream life? Or do you only say that now looking back?
ZB: I think we knew it was special. I mean, dude, I was going to the Ralph’s on La Brea and Third because you could get a $5 foot-long sub and I could have half for lunch and half for dinner. I was also just not getting callbacks, and was really down in my spirits about my acting career. And then everything changed. So, no, I remember not taking it for granted and being so grateful to the universe for this.
MH: At the beginning of season 3, J.D. really wants Turk to open up and get deep with him. It's this running thread throughout the series, even in the revival. Has that ever been a problem for you two? How quickly did you get vulnerable with each other?
ZB: I'm definitely more willing to talk about my feelings than Donald.
DF: Absolutely you are.
ZB: That very much limits your characters. My mom was a psychologist. My stepfather was a psychologist. Therapy has been a part of my whole life. You talk about your feelings. Donald definitely just holds it in.
DF: I don't hold it in. I'll talk about it. But we don't need to go in-depth. It's more like, “This happened. I don't want to get into it, but this happened. Let's keep it moving.”
ZB: Yeah.
DF: He's like, “This happened, and my heart is ablaze [Laughs].
ZB: Oh, shut the fuck up. My heart is ablaze. You're funny. He's definitely more of the Let's just avoid the confrontation and not talk about it type. And then all of a sudden he'll come in and say one sentence that's sort of like an apology, but not really. But you can just assume that's what he meant.
MH: Donald, you're looking a little confused at that description.
DF: I don't understand where he's going with that, but OK.
ZB: The point is, he doesn't talk about his emotions.
DF: I apologize quite a bit.
MH: Were you two ever competitive with or jealous of one another?
DF: No. Never. As you get older, you learn to throw such things away.
ZB: Not everybody does.
DF: I get that. But bitterness is one of the most messed up things you can have in your life, and it'll keep you from doing so many things. Jealousy is one of those things that'll stop you from getting to your dreams.
ZB: I'm just trying to say that we are so fucking lucky—because this cast never had that. There are so many casts out there who get pissed off because “so-and-so has more screen time,” or “so-and-so always has the last line of the joke of the scene.” We never had that.
DF: We just wanted it to be funny. That's all I mean.
ZB: We had seven people who were the leads of the show, all rooting for one another and laughing when the other person was crushing. When I direct some shows, you'll see people improv-ing a joke to end the scene after the other person's funny line, and then the other person's like, “Wait, I thought I was going to have the blow to the scene. What the fuck?” You can see that tension. And in our show, it's always been like, “Whatever is funniest wins.” If I have a really funny end of the scene—great. If Donald riffs something better—great. Let's go with that. We've always championed each other.
DF: I just don't know how a show can be successful if the whole cast is jealous of each other or bitter.
ZB: A lot of shows have that energy. You know that!
DF: Absolutely. And like I said, it's hard for me to understand people who get up and are eager to work in a toxic environment.
ZB: I've heard anecdotes where, “So-and-so wants to talk to you.” And then the director clearly knows it's because the other person is shining. And the other person's ego is bruised and insecure because they're worried they're getting put in the shadows.
MH: Bill Lawrence mentioned years ago that he started writing plotlines based on your weekends out together. What kind of weekends are you having now in your 50s?
ZB: None.
DF: Well, they end at 6 p.m. Dinner's at, like, 6 p.m. After dinner, we're rushing home to shower and get into bed.
ZB: We don't really do anything anymore. Because we were shooting on location, I would do a dinner with the cast every Saturday night. It was the only time I could ever do anything social because of producing and directing the show. So every Saturday night I would take the whole cast and the producers and the director out, and we would have a really, really nice dinner together. I thought it was great for all of us to bond and get to know one another.
DF: It was also really interesting to see how much older I was than our new cast members. When dinner was over, they were like, “We're going to go hit the club.” And I was like, “No, I don't have that in me anymore. I can't.”
ZB: Yeah, Donald and I would go home. “What are you talking about? Nine o'clock is bedtime.” It's fun to watch them, vicariously, do what we did when we were 25. Go out and have fun. I don't think they have any clue how their lives are about to change. They're going to find out soon enough.
MH: Speaking of feeling old, how many times did you try The Eagle move before you felt like you could perfect it again?
DF: I could do it right now. And I could do it with someone way heavier than Zach. Listen, Men's Health: I am a 51-year-old man who can lift weights, my friends.
ZB: If you get Donald on the cover, he will get shredded.
DF: I will rip up. I will. Listen, if you want to give me the cover—give me three months. I guarantee you I'll walk in there looking like Michael B. Jordan. I'll come in there looking like Taye Diggs 2000.
ZB: We would like to accept the challenge for Men's Health. If we get shredded enough. You give us the cover. I will look like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
DF: Holy shit!
MH: I'll bring that back to the editorial team and see what we can do.
ZB: Yeah, I think it's a good idea.
DF: Give me three months.
ZB: We might need more than three months…
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and culture writer based in New York. His work frequently appears in The Ringer, GQ.com, and InsideHook, among other publications. You can follow him on X at @jakeks19.
