Donald Faison, who played Dr. Christopher Turk on the show “Scrubs,” celebrates his birthday today, June 22.
As “Scrubs” still has a lasting fan base — the writers would call their cult following “Our Nerds” — The Huffington Post has gathered 11 things from old interviews that you didn’t know about your favorite gang of doctors, and they’ll make you want to yell, “Eagle!”
1. The main cast went skinny dipping together on Faison’s birthday.
Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Faison appeared on AOL’s “Outside the Box” series and were asked by a fan about the weirdest or most memorable moment they’d had on or off the set.
Faison told a story about the three of them going to the Bahamas for his birthday, where they went swimming in the ocean. While they waded in the waves, they could look into the distance and see a lightning storm adding beautiful touches of light to the horizon.
Originally, Faison was just going to stop there, but then Braff said Faison should mention they were skinny dipping, as well. Chalke said she kept her swimsuit on, but Braff claimed that he and Faison were swimming naked together, “just like J.D. and Turk would.”
2. J.D. and Turk were based on real doctors, one of which was “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence’s best friend in college.
Image: “Scrubs”
In 2004, Bill Lawrence and Braff appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air to talk about their still relatively new show at the time, along with the upcoming release of Braff’s “Garden State.” Lawrence talked about how the show was based in reality, partly because his best friend from the College of William & Mary — where he went for undergrad — was a future med school student named J.D.
Hence the inspiration for Lawrence’s group of normal, young, fun-loving friends trying to survive the rigors of becoming a doctor.
Lawrence’s last memory of J.D. was as a guy with an empty 12-pack of beer on his head. He told Fresh Air that his worst nightmare in the world as a young 23-year-old would have been to end up in the emergency room with J.D. as the doctor.
At a talk at his alma mater in 2009, Lawrence said that the relationship between J.D. and Turk is based off his own friendship with J.D. in school, mixed with the stories that came from the real-life Dr. Jon Turk.
You can see Faison and Braff meet the doctors they’re based on in this video.
3. Braff said that his ideal end for the show was Ted going “postal” and killing everyone.
Image: “Scrubs” Wikia
Talking with ABC — coincidentally, during the same day as the previously mentioned AOL interview — the main stars were asked how they would write the ending of the show.
Braff responded, “I would like Ted the lawyer to go postal and come to work and kill everybody.” Faison responded, “Nice.”
The three seemed particularly annoyed with this soul-patched interviewer, so Braff was probably just joking. He ended up changing his answer to Elliot and J.D. ending up together, Turk ending his relationship with Carla and then Elliot and J.D. adopting him.
4. The actor who played “The Todd” described the character’s sexuality as “try-sexual,” as in he’d try anything.
Image: “Scrubs” Wikia
At a Season 3 party, IGN asked Robert Maschio about the sexual orientation of “The Todd.”
Maschio responded:
I think he’s not homosexual. He’s not bisexual. He’s try-sexual. He’ll try anyone. I think “The Todd” would go for the hot girl at the party first, and then as the night goes on, if I may say, he may go for the fat girl, and then when he strikes out there, he’s gonna go with the dude who’s been eyeing him all night. Just take him home and say, “Just finish that off. As long as I don’t touch your ears, it’s not gay.” That’s how I take it. He’s a hedonist. He’s a sensualist. He’s addicted to pleasures of the flesh.
5. The cast and crew had an ongoing game of dares called “Scrubs Factor.” Tattoos and eating pigs’ feet were involved.
“Scrubs Factor” is mentioned in that same IGN interview by multiple members of the cast and crew. At the time, Braff said the grossest one had been, “when the guy ate pigs’ feet.” Braff continued, “He loved pigs’ feet and he downed about 30 in about five minutes for like 500 bucks.”
In a feature for the Season 3 DVD, Lawrence explained that he started the game as a bonding session and initially instigated the pigs’ feet challenge when they all came across a jar of them at a bar.
Chalke was once dared by Lawrence to go order coffee at a Starbucks in a burlesque outfit where she apparently had to wait 20 minutes in line. During the IGN interview, Chalke also mentioned that later that night, $1,000 was on the table for whoever got a “Scrubs” tattoo. It’s unclear whether anybody followed through.
6. The medical cases in the show were based on actual stories from physicians, whose names would then be written into the show.
Image: Getty
During NPR’s Fresh Air interview with Braff and Lawrence, the show creator said that every single medical story on the show was handed to them by real physicians.
The show never used real patients’ names, but Lawrence and his writers would make sure the doctors’ names were written into the episodes.
7. Lawrence’s wife — who played Jordan — would dictate her acting schedule while they were in bed.
Image: “Scrubs”
Also in that NPR interview, Lawrence talked about what it was like having his wife, Christa Miller, play a main character on the show. Lawrence said that he’d take elements of their marriage and put them into the writing, presumably for the relationship between Jordan and Dr. Cox. He jokingly added that it was the one time a week he could tell his wife what to do and she’d have to listen.
Lawrence also said that Miller had “the world’s cherriest gig” for an actress because she could wake up next to him, say she felt like working Thursday, and then Lawrence and the writers would write her into the script for that day.
8. Braff quit his job as a waiter when he got hired for “Scrubs,” but didn’t realize filming wouldn’t start for another four months. He wrote “Garden State” during this time.
During the “Garden State” press tour, Braff was interviewed by Uncut and was asked how long it took him to figure out the movie. Braff said it actually had to do with how the beginning of his “Scrubs” job worked out.
I’d been waiting tables when I got cast in ‘Scrubs,’ and I quit as a waiter only to be told we wouldn’t actually be filming for four months. So I sat down for that time and hammered out the first draft. Then once ‘Scrubs’ started, I spent the next two years trying to get someone interested in making it.
9. The “Scrubs” scripts were kept top secret from even the main cast during the early seasons.
Image: “Scrubs”
An early episode of “The Daily Show” featured Jon Stewart interviewing a young Braff just as “Scrubs” was starting to get traction. When Stewart asked what sorts of plot developments were coming up, Braff claimed that the writers told him nothing and he didn’t find out what would happen until the day he’d show up to set.
“It’s all very top secret,” said Braff.
Braff also asked Stewart to come on the show as a patient or a corpse, which unfortunately never came to be.
10. NBC changed the show’s airing time so often that Braff’s mom would regularly call him to ask when she could watch.
Image: Getty
IGN also interviewed Braff in 2004, and he said that he felt that a lot of the trouble with the “Scrubs” ratings at the time was caused by NBC moving the show around so much in their schedule.
Braff even told a story about how his mom had a hard time finding out when to watch her son, saying, “My mom will call me and be like, ‘When are you on this week?'”
11. If the show only lasted one season, Janitor was going to be just a figment of J.D.’s imagination.
Image: “Scrubs” Wikia
“If the show ended after one year, he was just going to be a figment of J.D.’s imagination,” Lawrence said during NPR’s Fresh Air interview. It wasn’t until about midway through the second season that the actor who played Janitor, Neil Flynn, was able to interact with another actor aside from Braff.
There was also a couple competing reasons for why the Janitor was always picking on Braff. Lawrence felt, personally, that he’d always had someone in his life latch on to teasing him for seemingly no reason, and so Flynn’s character was based on this idea.
Flynn told IGN that his character was completely justified because J.D. — at least in Janitor’s mind — jammed a door in the hospital with a penny and Janitor had to fix it. Responding to Lawrence joking that J.D. might have wronged Janitor first, Flynn yelled, “He did!”
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