Zach Braff Quit His Restaurant Job After Landing Scrubs Pilot

Zach Braff was working at a restaurant when he booked Scrubs.

“I got Scrubs after six auditions,” the actor said during a panel conversation with the show’s creator Bill Lawrence at the ATX TV Festival on Sunday, Jun. 1. “I was driving home and I put the Motorola StarTAC on the passenger seat, my phone rang and it was Bill and he said ‘you got it’ and I was so thrilled and my life was going to change.”

“Even if it was just the pilot, my life was changed forever because I was living so frugally,” Braff, 50, continued. 

Braff recalls how he called his mom, dad and the manager of the restaurant where he was working at the time and told them “I got it!” 

“The manager said ‘I am so happy for you, but you have to work tonight.’ And I got hammered, and I was the worst waiter ever. I quit the job, and my Mom said, ‘Why did you quit? What if it’s just the pilot?’ ” he recalled. “I had been living so frugally and said, ‘Do you know how long I could live off of the money of this pilot?’ Like I had it dialed to live off like $12,000 a year, so from the pilot I was like, ‘I’m rich!’ ”

From 2001 to 2010, Braff took on the role of J.D., the central physician on the beloved medical comedy alongside his costars Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes and Christa Miller. For the series’ ninth and final season, Braff returned for six episodes as the season introduced a new set of characters. During the show, the actor received three Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nod.

Braff recently announced he would be putting on his scrubs again as Dr. Dorian in a much-talked-about reboot. 

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Lawrence also previously told Deadline what he envisioned for the upcoming Scrubs reboot. The showrunner revealed that he expected the new series to feature both the original cast and new actors.

“We’ve been talking about a lot, and I think the only real reason to do it is a combo,” he explained. “A: people wanting to see what the world of medicine was like for the people they love, which is part of any successful reboot. But B: I think that show always worked because you get to see young people dropped into the world of medicine, knowing young people that go there are super idealistic and are doing it because it’s a calling.”

He added, “There’s no cliché ‘rich doctors playing golf’ — that’s not what it is anymore. So I think that, no matter what it is, it would be a giant mistake not to do as a combo of those two things.”