We’re all looking for distractions from the reality of what the coronavirus has wrought. And a new podcast about the sitcom “Scrubs” called “Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald” is an utterly charming way to pass an hour or so and momentarily forget about everything else that’s happening in the world.
The hospital-set comedy, which originally ran from 2001-2010, is currently streaming on Hulu. Hosting the newly launched podcast (produced by iHeartRadio) are stars Zach Braff (a Northwestern University alum) and Donald Faison who plan to rewatch episodes from the show each week and tell old stories.
“We were going to do this in person,” Braff says at the outset of the first episode, “but then of course because of this COVID insanity, the good people of iHeart have figured out how Donald and I can do this remotely. So we’re looking at each other over Zoom and he’s in his closet, which is fricking hilarious — because I guess it’s the only place you can hide from your kids?”
“Yeah, they’re downstairs,” says Faison. “We put on ‘Captain Underpants’ so they’ll be quiet for a bit.”
Best pals on the sitcom, the pair became good friends in real life as well and it is their easy banter that makes the podcast work so well. They know how to keep the conversation from stalling. And crucially, they also understand that people want the kind of backstage stories that at least feel revealing.
Here are a few highlights from the first episode, which focuses on the “Scrubs” pilot.
Their audition stories
The actors were at different stages of their careers when they started on the show. Faison had already done a number of movies including “Clueless” and “Remember the Titans” and had a recurring role on “Felicity”: “I remember all my agents being like, ‘This is the No. 1 pilot of the season, everyone wanted to be part of this and you booked it!'” he says. “And I remember being like, ‘Holy cow.’ I was just looking at it as, let me get another job because I got kids to feed.”
Braff had a couple of indies on his resume, including “The Broken Hearts Club,” but that was it. At the time, he was still waiting tables.
“I was a waiter at a French-Vietnamese restaurant in Beverly Hills … ‘Broken Hearts Club’ was in theaters and people would come from the theater for dessert to the restaurant and be like, ‘We just saw your movie.’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh, cool thank you for going.’ And they’d be like, ‘You were great!’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you so much. Let me tell you about our specials … ‘ Only in Hollywood can you go see a movie and then have the star of the movie wait on you for dessert.”
(He tells a cringe-worthy story of taking a meeting about his acting career during the day and then seeing those same people showing up at the restaurant when he was on shift, and it reminded me of a similar story for “My Worst Moment” by “Grey’s Anatomy” start Camilla Luddington. In that same vein, Mike Cutler also has some amusing things to say about working as a waiter while he was on “The Good Wife,” which he talked about for “My Worst Moment” as well.)
Braff felt as inexperienced as the young doctor he was playing
“There’s no person better to play someone young and in over their head than me because here I was, I didn’t know anything. It was all method acting. I didn’t know anything about starring on a TV show … Every time I was playing the wide-eyed guy walking around, I was just being me.”
Producers wanted the cast to go on medical rounds with a doctor. Braff was game; Faison refused.
Faison: “I was like, ‘I don’t want to see any of this!’ … If you could just tell me some anecdotes that’d be great.”
Braff: “I remember thinking it was really inappropriate, actually, that she was having me go around and visit patients with her. She put a stethoscope around my neck so I would look legit. I know, it’s kind of (messed) up in hindsight.”
Faison: “Dude, how much did you hate that until you saw it?”
Braff: “It was a motion-control camera and it really took a long time to do that, and at the time we didn’t know how cool it would look, so it took a full day to do it. And I remember we were all kind of really over it by the end; then it came out and it was really (very) cool. And we’ve heard this many times our whole ‘Scrubs’ existence, but the X-ray at the end of backwards. Every doctor wanted to point that out and we used to be like, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, that’s on purpose. Get it? They’re med students, they don’t get it.'”
In truth, it was an error.
Faison: “We got lucky with that too because it kind of set the tone for this offbeat wacky show of ours.”
There’s a whole thing about Faison’s teeth. And his hairline.
Braff: “Let’s talk about your teeth for a second, because I don’t think we can just let this go.”
Faison (long exasperated sound): “I had baby teeth when we started shooting the show; I don’t have baby teeth anymore, I spent a lot of money on new teeth.”
Faison says they had him wear fake braces in “Clueless” to hide his small teeth. “And they shaved my head in ‘Clueless’ because my hairline was receding at 18 … when I was a kid they called me George Jefferson because of my hairline, are you happy?“
Initial impressions of their fellow cast members
Like his character, John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox) was intimidating — but also had the most confidence from the start about how to play his character. What is he like in real life? Braff: “He literally is this intense, but he’s a super sweet nice person.”
Chicago improviser Neil Flynn (the janitor) wasn’t supposed to be a regular cast member, Braff said. “But he was so hilarious that Bill just kept adding him and adding him and adding him, to the point where he became one of the stars of the show. And Neil is a hilarious improvisational actor, so a lot of times he would just make up his own lines — throughout the whole run of the show. In fact it got to a point where sometimes in the script it would say, ‘And then Neil makes up something funny.’ Like, it wouldn’t even have a line for him because Neil was so gifted and hilarious.”
Pot on the show
At some point during the series’ run the writers came up with a medicinal marijuana storyline that was nixed by the network and never filmed. Apparently there was a good deal of pot smoking going on behind the scenes when it became legal in California for medicinal reasons.
Faison: “I remember that because (pause) there were a lot of people smoking weed.”
Braff: “Well, we probably shouldn’t bring that up in the first episode of this. Let’s get to how high everybody was in future episodes. We have to tease something.”
Faison: “I’m just saying, that was a tease.”
Braff: “OK: In future episodes, Donald will out who was baked when.”
Faison: “That would be so funny if that’s how we did it: ‘In that scene, he’s high!'”
Braff: “I think you need to come clean when we get to scenes where you were baked.”
Faison: “That will be, like, the whole series run.”
New episodes will post weekly at www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-fake-doctors-real-friends
