For nine seasons and 182 episodes, John C. McGinley challenged his team at Sacred Heart Hospital in the medical comedy series Scrubs as the acerbic, sarcastic Dr. Perry Cox. Now, the actor, who appeared in the cult classic film, Office Space, is reuniting with Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence for his new HBO comedy series, Deadline reports.
Lawrence, who is also behind such hit series as Ted Lasso and Shrinking on Apple TV+, is partnering with writer/executive producer Matt Tarses (Scrubs, Bad Monkey) on a new comedy series for HBO. The yet-untitled series is set to be headlined by Steve Carell (The Office), who will also serve as executive producer on the project.
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McGinley joins a cast that includes Carell, Phil Dunster (Ted Lasso), Charley Clive (The Lazarus Project), and Danielle Deadwyler (Carry-On). A college campus provides the setting for Lawrence’s new comedy series, which focuses on Carell’s character, an author, who has a complicated relationship with his daughter, played by Clive. McGinley will play a character named Walter Mann, who is president of the college.
The series is set to air for 10 episodes with the first penned by Lawrence and Tarses. Lawrence, Jeff Ingold, and Liza Katzer of Doozer Productions serve as executive producers with Tarses and Carell. The show is being produced by Doozer in association with Warner Bros. Television. Lawrence’s Doozer banner and Tarses are under an overall deal with Warner Bros.
Lawrence’s new comedy will be the third time McGinley and the Scrubs creator will have worked together. McGinley was also a series regular on the series Ground Floor, which Lawrence created with Greg Malins. Ground Floor aired for 20 episodes on TBS from 2013 to 2015.
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Scrubs Reboot Was Confirmed in December
The long-anticipated Scrubs reboot will also likely feature McGinley reprising his Dr. Cox character. In December, a Scrubs revival was announced, per the Los Angeles Times. At that time, Lawrence confessed that he “was always hesitant” to revisit the medical comedy in the past.
“If I thought it was a bad idea, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not chasing commerce and, without being self-aggrandizing, I don’t need to,” Lawrence said. “Creatively, if somebody said, ‘Do you want to pick Scrubs up right back at the same hospital with the same people on a normal day, everything’s back to normal?’ No, that would be disingenuous to the story,” he said. Lawrence added that he anticipates starting to write the reboot sometime in 2025 and that a deal with a showrunner “is being made as we speak.”
Scrubs aired from 2001 to 2009 and followed the lives of a group of young interns at the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital. The series starred Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes, Ken Jenkins, Neil Flynn, and McGinley. Christa Miller, who appears currently on Shrinking, and is married to Lawrence, also appeared in 89 episodes of Scrubs. Fans should note that McGinley’s Dr. Cox character from Scrubs started working at a university as a professor at the end of the series, which coincidentally is the new HBO series’ character’s background.
Scrubs is currently streaming on Hulu and Peacock. A release date for the untitled Lawrence HBO project has not been announced.
Source: Deadline
