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Zach Braff Reveals Why Scrubs Season 9 Isn't Part of Revival Storyline

Scrubs stars Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison revealed during an exclusive E! News interview why they decided to revive the show for season 10 after fan backlash when the show ended in 2010.

By Kristina Behr Feb 20, 2026 5:00 PMTags
Watch: Zach Braff Reveals Why ‘Scrubs’ Season 9 Isn't Part of Revival Storyline

The doctors at Sacred Heart Hospital are ready to scrub back in.

Indeed, original Scrubs cast members Zach Braff (J.D.), Donald Faison (Turk), Sarah Chalke (Elliott), Judy Reyes (Nurse Carla) and John C. McGinley (Dr. Cox) have all returned to the hit medical comedy for a season 10 revival. 

Despite fan backlash over season nine, which aired in 2009 and only saw the brief return of Zach and Donald’s characters mixed in with an entirely new cast, fans can expect to see more of the same hospital shenanigans from seasons one through eight (including hilariously inappropriate quips from “The Todd.”)

“There's drama, there's comedy, there's these wacky fantasies, but the baseline is that the show is based in reality,” Zach revealed alongside Donald and Sarah in an interview with E! News, admitting that the cast and the show’s creator Bill Lawrence thought season nine should have been a spinoff called Scrubs: Med School. "I think we wanted to come back and sort of regroup and go, well, let's bring this back to what it started as."

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See Scrubs' Zach Braff, Donald Faison and More Reunite in Revival Teaser

“That’s not really part of the canon of this story, and we're staying with season eight as the finale,” Zach added, before cautioning that the way the eighth season ended wasn’t necessarily a happy ending despite J.D.'s final vision of his happily-ever-after marriage to Elliott.

“It's what he dreams would happen,” the 50-year-old emphasizes. “And as we all know, some dreams come true, and some don't.”

Interest in the original characters and the show never waned in the 16 years since the show has been off the air, due in part to Zach and Donald’s chemistry and off-screen friendship on full display in their T-Mobile commercials and their podcast ‘Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald.’ 

Hulu/ABC

With that has come a new generation of fans that occasionally become a little too eager to recite favorite moments from the show when they see cast members in public. 

Donald recalled one encounter abroad when a fan shouted his and Zach's famous “Eagle” scene at him, recalling, “Somebody jumped on my back in London. And I didn't like that. I threw him off my back and ran for my life,” to which Zach asked with a laugh, “Was he drunk?” 

“No!” Donald exclaimed, “It was like in the middle of the day!”

And that wasn’t the only inappropriate fan encounter, as Donald explained further, “Before my colonoscopy, the nurse in the waiting room was like, ‘I'm such a huge fan of the show.’ And that was kind of weird. She wanted to talk about the show for a bit of time while I’m in my robe and sitting there trying my best not to feel uncomfortable.”

Zach admitted he had a similar encounter, recalling, “I definitely had that with doctors where you're like naked in a robe. And they're like, ‘You know what you should do if you revive Scrubs?’ And you're like, ‘Aren't I supposed to be coughing right now?’”

Though the role has come with some perks too, as Donald adds, “You walk into the doctor's office and everybody's like, oh s—! Turk's here! Let's get him in the back as quickly as possible.”

Disney/Jeff Weddell

Bizarre encounters aside, Donald says it felt “trippy” seeing the original cast come back together for a new season, though it was the only prerequisite they all had for it to come to fruition.

“We talked about this for a couple of years, but we'd all said like, ‘Well, if we're going to do it, we all want to do it,’” Sarah explained, who said it “felt like home” putting on her white doctor’s coat and scrubs once again. 

The only difference among them? 

“I have wrinkles,” Zach said with a laugh. “You know, every time I post a picture of me and Donald, every fourth comment is, ‘Well, Donald didn't age.’” 

Scrubs premieres on ABC on February 25, 2026, at 8 p.m. ET, with next-day streaming on Hulu.

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