Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence has said that he is bringing back the medical sitcom for purely “selfish” reasons.
In December, it was reported that the beloved show would be returning, with Lawrence said to be currently working alongside 20th Television on the new incarnation of the Zach Braff-starring comedy for ABC.
Now, in an interview with Variety, Lawrence has given an update on the status of the reboot, explaining that they are currently in the process of “putting the writers together”.
“It’s the best thing in the world to see that some of the most talented writers in the world wrote on that show and they’re all still friends, and my friends,” he said. “And so [we] have a combination of the old and new. We’re just starting to build it right now. And I expect it to make an appearance very soon.”
When asked about his motivation for returning to the show, he replied: “I thought about it a lot, and I think the main impetus is selfish. It’s that we’re all friends, and we enjoy spending time together, and you can’t meet a writer or an actor or actress on that show, a crew member, that didn’t count that as one of the highlights of their career. And so all of us were like, even if it’s just that, why not do it again? And that’s part of the fun.”
Reports indicate that Lawrence will not be serving as showrunner for the new version of Scrubs and no confirmations have yet been made concerning the cast of the revival.
The writer, also known as the creator of Ted Lasso, Spin City and Shrinking, told the Los Angeles Times in December about his decision to return to the show. “If I thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “I’m not chasing commerce and without being self-aggrandizing, I don’t need to.”
Explaining that the show will be more than a simple continuation of the existing show, he added: “Creatively, if somebody said, ‘Do you want to pick Scrubs up right back in the same hospital with the same people on a normal day, everything’s back to normal?’ No, that would be disingenuous to the story. Am I curious and can I think of a bunch of stories about where some of these characters are years later, not being kid interns anymore, and having new young people around them, with the way the medical world has changed – yeah, without a shadow of a doubt. That creative answer was easy.”
“It’s not going to be a mailed-in cash grab,” he continued. “There will be a bunch of the original Scrubs writers on the show; there will also be a bunch of new writers.”
Scrubs ran for nine seasons from 2001 to 2010 and last year, Zach Braff, who played J.D., said that while he and the cast were “exhausted” by the end of the final season, they would still be up for a reunion.
“I miss laughing every day,” he said. “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.”
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