Last summer, there years after Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence talked about his plan to revive the series, ABC officially ordered the revival to series. Right out the gate, Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke were announced to be respectively reprising J.D., Turk and Elliot for this midseason offering on the 2026 TV schedule. CinemaBlend also recently learned that one of the Scrubs revival’s new actors was with Braff when it was announced that one of the best sitcoms of all time was returning.
David Gridley stars in the Scrubs revival’s first season (Season 10 overall) as Blake Lewis, one of the medical interns that J.D. is teaching in his new position as Sacred Heart’s Chief of Medicine. But before Gridley was cast in Scrubs, he was working with Braff on a different Bill Lawrence-created show by the name of Rooster, which also premiered a few weeks ago and can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription. Gridley recalled the following when I asked him, as well as his co-star Amanda Morrow, about what it was like working with the Scrubs OGs at the beginning:
It's a cool story. I was working on a show that just came out called Rooster, and Zach was directing the episode. So the first time I met Zach was on that set, and on the day that we met, Scrubs just got the greenlight. So my first thing I said to him was like, ‘Hey, man, congrats on Scrubs.’ That was our first interaction before I'd even auditioned for anything. So like going from there, and then like Amanda [was] saying, the table read and hearing all of the original characters and seeing Zach again and [them doing] those characters was just mind blowing.
David Gridely appeared in Rooster’s first episode, but that was directed by Jonathan Krisel. And then while Zach Braff directed Rooster’s third episode, which premiered this past Sunday, Gridley didn’t appear in it. So we’ll have to wait and see which Rooster episode they collaborated on, but I like that Gridley and Braff knew each other before Scrubs came the former’s way. It makes me wonder if Braff immediately recognized him when the Scrubs revival began production, if not had a hand in getting Gridley cast.
Clearly David Gridley has a lot of respect for Zach Braff, which is in sharp contrast with how he’s not as enamored with J.D. as Asher and Tosh, the other primary medical interns, are. Blake is very much the loner of the core group of younger characters and hesitant to open up, and he initially ignored J.D.’s suggestion not to close himself off from his coworkers in the premiere episode. Fortunately Blake has slowly been coming around on that front, but Gridley clarified during the interview that while his character respects Braff’s in terms of “excellence in work,” he doesn’t find him particularly inspirational.
With just three episodes left to go on this season of Scrubs, here’s hoping Blake warms up to J.D. a little more in these next few weeks. It’d be even better ABC orders another season so the character can be fleshed out even more. Don’t forget that both the original and revived Scrubs can be streamed with a Hulu subscription.
