1 of 5 | Carla (Judy Reyes) manages the overcrowded ER in “Scrubs,” premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC. Photo courtesy of Disney
The doctors and nurses of Sacred Heart Hospital return in the Scrubs revival, premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST on ABC. Judy Reyes’s nurse Carla and John C. McGinley’s Dr. Perry Cox are noticeably worn by 16 years of medical practice.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, the returning actors said burnout and family give them new material to play in the medical comedy. Carla is reintroduced managing the overcrowded emergency room waiting room.
“Just like Dr. Cox is facing a lot of burnout, ultimately Carla has too,” Reyes, 58, said. “She’s in charge, she’s got four children, her husband’s the chief of surgery now. I think ultimately it’s going to get to her but yes, she can handle it.”
Dr. Cox faces new struggles in medicine with the same rapid-fire rants with which he used to chastise J.D. (Zach Braff) when the latter was an intern. McGinley, 66, said it took weeks of rehearsal to get back in the groove.
“Getting all those syllables in my brain was really, really hard,” McGinley said. “So I busted my tail on that and I’m glad I did because on the day, it flowed out but that was three weeks of really busting my tail.”
When J.D. returns to Sacred Heart, Cox recognizes that his former student can now be a mentor to the current group of interns. McGinley said this reflects well on their relationship in the original Scrubs series.
“I think Dr. Cox has done a good job mentoring the J.D. character,” McGinley said. “That gives him permission to pass the baton because he knows that J.D. has an adequate tool set and he’s confident that that’s the only guy who can do it.”
In fact, J.D. is the only character who enjoys a more subdued moment with Cox in the series premiere. Those are the moments McGinley said he and his co-stars relish.
“Any time I get to connect with anybody in the ensemble it feels good to me, at whatever the pace is,” McGinley said.
Carla’s banter with J.D. is on a more equal level. They rose through the ranks of Sacred Heart at the same time, so when J.D. returns they mess with each other.
“I think she always comes back at him with something else but yes, they have a friendship now,” Reyes said. “He’s going to try to tell her how to do things and she’ll correct them.”
Carla married surgeon Christopher Turk (Donald Faison) in the original series. Now they have four daughters, seen in flashbacks to their home life.
“It’s in keeping with the same but different,” Reyes said of the Turk family growth. “That’s Turk and five women that keeps them grounded and happy and able to work in an environment that is obviously so sad and so depressing sometimes that you need a home life or you need to be making jokes in order to get through.”
McGinley said developing the characters in that way avoids making the Scrubs revival repetitive of the original show.
“The writers then have an opportunity to not subject your storylines to redundancy,” McGinley said. “With four kids, those are variables that the writers now can go, ‘Oh, great.. Here’s something fresh.’ That’s just delicious.”
Reyes said the writing excited her, and new showrunners Aseem Batra and Tim Hobert also allowed improvisation.
“The space and safety that we feel to improvise and try new things and not take it personally when a writer or director says, ‘No, don’t do that. Go back to the original line. Try that’ is fun,” Reyes said. “It makes the day shorter.”
Like her character, Reyes is also doing double duty. She also stars on the ABC drama High Potential.
Since Scrubs is also produced by and airing on ABC, they coordinated the shows’ schedules. Reyes is a recurring guest star on Scrubs.
“I’m already fortunately employed but we’re both on the same network, they’ve worked very closely together to make sure that I’m available for everything that each show needs,” Reyes said. “It’s a lot of work for sure, but boo hoo.”
Scrubs episodes stream on Hulu Thursdays.
