15 Fan-Demanded "Scrubs" Questions Answered By Zach Braff Himself

Zach Braff has accomplished so much in Hollywood over the course of his two-and-half-decade-long career, from starring in big-budget films like Oz the Great and Powerful and Chicken Little, to writing and directing the indie classic Garden State. But, of course, he is probably best known for his role as the lovable J.D. on Scrubs. Braff recently stopped by the BuzzFeed offices in celebration of Scrubs making its Comedy Central debut and in between playing the game Operation, he answered your most burning questions.

Zach Braff: I haven’t played Operation since I was a child, but I do feel like as an adult I’ll be able to nail this. I also, as you know, played a doctor on television for many years and have done some very light procedures on friends and acquaintances, so I think I should be able to do some basic operation.

ZB: Donald and I do truly love each other — you can cut right now and show pictures of us through the years. We’ve been on speedboats, we’ve been in hot tubs, I attended the wedding to his lovely bride, CaCee [Cobb]. We do love each other. We love each other very much, I can’t lie. You’re going to ask me if it’s ever crossed certain taboo lines and I’m going to say no, it hasn’t. [Nods, then mouths, "It has."]

ZB: My favorite Scrubs fantasy? Oh man. There were so many, I don’t even know where to begin. I like the ones that were so random and stoner-y, like Donald dressed as a goat — he was a half-goat man. And he was trying to hit on, I think he was hitting on Keri Russell. Goat Turk was hitting on Keri Russell, and she was dressed as a mermaid and I think I remember saying, “Goat Turk, that’s my mermaid!” And I don’t know, it was just so random and weird, but I loved a lot of it! I can’t even begin to think, but that’s the first one that comes to mind.

ZB: Bill Lawrence, our show’s creator, thought the Janitor might just be a figment of J.D.’s imagination. He thought that it would be funny because we didn’t know how long the show was going to go. In fact Neil [Flynn], who played the Janitor, didn’t even have a major role in the show — he was doing a cameo in the pilot. Neil was so incredibly funny that Bill made him a regular and then the whole first season Bill thought, Wouldn’t it be funny, like, he might not even exist. Like, he’s just in J.D.’s imagination. And then once the show started becoming successful and being on for so long, for more seasons, we realized he had to interact with other people besides me. In terms of his name, no one knew his name — I think Bill made that up the last season, and to this day there’s controversy over his name, whether it really is Glen Matthews. We don’t know.

ZB: I pitched to Bill that J.D. inherits a small amount of money and he uses it to make the Dr. Acula movie that he and Turk always dreamed of making. So, it’d be a small movie or a small miniseries where they’re still doctors and they’re friends, but in their spare time they’re fulfilling their dream of making their vampire, medical indie film, Dr. Acula.

Please tweet Bill Lawrence, @VDOOZER, that you think it’s a great idea because he’s on the fence about it. Link to this and say, “Zach’s idea for the Dr. Acula movie is genius. What’s wrong with you, Bill?”

ZB: The first thing that comes to my mind is always — and I think I’ve said this on one of the gag reel things, and you can link to the gag reel here because there’s footage of it — it’s so funny. The Janitor’s wife had limited fingers and she had used whatever fingers she had to make me scrubs short shorts. And he wanted to me to wear them and he was very offended that I wasn’t going to wear them in the hospital because she had put all this time into making scrubs short shorts. And I had to get through the line “I’m a doctor, I can’t wear short shorts to work,” and it still to this day makes me crack up. Just looking at Neil’s face, it was really, really hilarious, and you can see the zillion takes of me trying to get through it. The line was something like, “Look, I’m a doctor. I can’t really wear shorts to work.” It was funny.

ZB: The Todd. I really think that his range was just amazing. He went from just a heterosexual, alpha-male idiot dirtbag, to a bisexual, alpha-male idiot. No, I love that The Todd’s only real arc was you learned that he would have sex with anyone — young, old, male, female. Anything, he was down, which I think was a beautiful arc for him over eight years.

ZB: That there’s no greater job than laughing your ass off with your friends all day long. It was such a dream scenario to spend — I spent eight and a half years laughing with my best friends — and then hearing that we were making people around the world laugh. And of course at that time we just thought, Oh, it’s just going on in primetime. We didn’t know that we’d be sitting here this many years later talking about how it just got picked up for a run on Comedy Central. So that’s the greatest lesson: that I was so blessed to have that great, awesome job, and I just love that it made people so happy.