Zach Braff admits “Scrubs ”cast was 'exhausted' by the final season: 'We were starting to repeat jokes'

The actor recalled working "insane hours that people don't even do anymore," which led to burnout.

By the show's ninth and final season, the cast of Scrubs was more than ready to hang up their stethoscopes.

Zach Braff recently got real about the core cast's burnout during an interview for Michael Rosenbaum's Inside of You podcast. "By the time nine years were over, we were sort of all exhausted by it," said the 49-year-old actor.

When asked if it was because nobody made him laugh anymore, Braff clarified it was "just the hours of it," continuing, "I felt like, at the time, we were starting to repeat jokes. Everyone was pretty fried. This was back in the day, and I'm sure you did this on Smallville, we would do insane hours that people don't even do anymore."

Scrubs (which ran from 2001-2009) secured a coveted 9 p.m. primetime slot during NBC's Tuesday night lineup, airing after Frasier and later 30 Rock, and was a huge success. The medical sitcom garnered a broad and loyal fan base as well as industry recognition. The comedy received 17 Emmy nominations and won twice.

But the series stalled out as the eighth season wound down to a planned series finale in 2009. That season's final two-part episode was actually titled "My Finale," but the show was resurrected in a slightly different form for a ninth and final season. All of the core cast members save Braff, Donald Faison, and John C. McGinley dropped out, and were replaced by Kerry Bishé, Eliza Coupe, Dave Franco, and Michael Mosley, who were promoted to series regulars, and the subtitle "Med School" was affixed to the credits to denote the significant changes to the show.

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"We didn't really have much of a life outside of it," Braff recalled of the grueling production schedule. "So we were just kind of fried, you know?” But the Garden State actor/director — who credited Scrubs with changing his whole life "only recalls the sitcom with fondness. "I miss laughing every day. Belly laughing every day was the job."

Luckily, he's kept in touch with many people associated with the series.

Related: Scrubs cast: Where are they now?

"It's not just me and Donald who were best friends," said Braff, who along with Faison cohosts the Scrubs rewatch podcast Fake Doctors, Real Friends. He told Rosenbaum that he also "just vacationed with Sarah Chalke in Montauk," that series creator "Bill Lawrence and I sauna and cold plunge every other day together," and he's "still super close" with McGinley, who played the lovable grump Dr. Cox.

Braff has also directed an episode of Ted Lasso and currently directs episodes of Shrinking, both of which were co-created by Lawrence.

Related: Watch Zach Braff struggle to name all of BFF Donald Faison's 6 kids on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

Eventually, the perennial question aimed at veterans of successful TV series arose: Would Braff go back to Scrubs?

"Now, looking back — and there's talk of sort of reboots, that's a conversation — I think, 'Oh my gosh, being able to laugh with these people, belly laugh with these people again, would be a lot of fun.'"

He noted that if a reboot was presented as "a limited thing" he could be interested, elaborating, "When we signed up to do our shows, they put you under a pretty insane contract of like seven years and stuff, which I wouldn't do. But some sort of talk of a limited thing, you're basically saying, 'Do you wanna go get the gang back together and f---ing laugh your ass off with some of your best friends and be paid well?'"

When you put it that way, Braff's answer seems obvious.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.