107: My Super Ego with John C. McGinley

On this week's episode of Scrubs, there's a new hot shot intern at Sacred Heart. JD's place at the top of his class may be in jeopardy. Meanwhile, in the real world, John C. McGinley join Zach and Donald as they remember 9/11.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are you drinking today? That that liquor cabinets getting empty?
What have we got today? Listenish habits lemonade. I hear
the liquor store is not the place to go. I went,
when'd you go? I gloved up, I masked up, I
has matted up, and I went in and filled a
freaking basket. Yeah, you know, it's crazy they're talking about
opening it back up. Well not California. Texas is talking

(00:21):
about opening back up next week. Yeah, well that's not
gonna work out. That's just the dumbest thing I've ever
heard in my life. That's not gonna work out for anyone.
Good thing we have Governor newsom I think is doing
offense and Garsetti man, thankodness for Garsetti too. Man, both
doing well. Let's give them both a shout out. On
hold on, let's see here's some stories about show we

(00:44):
made about a bunch of dots and nurses and stories.
So yet around here, yea around here, as Donald phazon Um,

(01:06):
it's a very very exciting day today on this podcast.
Do you know why we're getting epic today? We're going now,
we're going uber epic today. Yeah, I mean, don't get
me wrong, the creator of the show. That's fancy, America's
favorite Canadian, Sarah Chawk. That's fancy, But nothing is as
fancy as someone who we love as much as this man,

(01:27):
who I can say I learned a lot as an
actor from and uh is just a really fucking talented
and hilarious human being. Stand by Dan with the thunderous
applause que Johnny c McGinley, Yeah, your boy, the legend,
the legend that is John c McGinley. Hello, Donald, Hello, Zachie,

(01:49):
how are you? I'm firmer, Yeah, you are always, always,
always Johnny, how's your how's the you know you were?
You were saying just before we started recording that you
know that you had been homeschooling your kids, So this
isn't as odd of a switch for you. Tell tell
everybody a little bit about that. We've been homeschooling forever.

(02:12):
Billy is twelve, Kates almost ten, and we've been homeschooling
for since, all the way through elementary school. Here one thing,
and this is the friends, obviously, and we've been taking
this thing super seriously. And we're totally locked down because
we've got Nicole, my wife's father here, who has some

(02:34):
pre existing challenges and pre existing conditions, and so we've
been taking this thing by the letter. And so look,
we're lucky enough to live in this place. I mean,
there's I built a baseball field during the writer's strike
on Scrubs, and so there's a baseball field right behind me,
and so we use that almost as a playground. And

(02:56):
you know, there's stuff. This is a kid compound, so
they can run around here, but they don't get to
see their friends. They don't go to do dance and
aeriel and pottery and all the stuff you do when
you're not homeschooling or go down to the beach. Friends.
Do you have friends like I was just thinking about Donald,
who who are homeschooling for the first time? Who are
calling you like gunny advice or anything? Because I'm watching

(03:17):
Donald do it and he's like hiding out in his closet.
I've run below my kids. This is how bad. People
don't call this department for that. They call they call
upstairs to the Nicole department. Then she and I need
to get on the phone because I am failing miserably.
My wife is My wife is a champion. She runs
the household. But I feel like I'm starting to slack

(03:37):
so much that she's like, when this is over, I'm
leaving you. I think if you could compartmentalize and play
to your strengths, Donald, you'd be better off. I don't
have many strengths. John How you do? You've got sports?
Johnny said, he's doing pe. You could be in charge
of PE. I have a competitive spirit in me that
won't allow my kids to beat me. I have problems, guys, problems. Well,

(04:01):
then my son screams at me because I never let
him win. He probably started meeting me at this. We
have this thing called Papa Shot, and it's like you
know how you go to the carnival, of course, and
you get to shoot as many jump shots as you
can and you verse somebody we have that. He destroys
me in that so much so that I don't want
to play the game anymore. Man, Well, I'm so I'm

(04:22):
still for you guys doing this. This Uh, this podcast
I've listened to. This is either the fourth or fifth one.
I've listened to everything, and it's I've listened to it
while I'm working out, because it's about an hour and
a half or so, and I put it on and
I go in the garage and it just makes me happy?
Does it? Does it get when when the theme song
comes on? Does that get you pumped? I liked it. Well,

(04:43):
you guys are so goddamn town, Johnny, Johnny, we wrote that.
It's our first It's our first time. As as as lyricists. Donald,
I don't know if you've been a lyricist before, but
it's my first time as a lyricist putting. I put
a lyric or two two songs in song for him.
I've done it. Yes, Well, it's my first time, and I, uh,
you're very good at it. That's not your first time, dude,
Do you see that? Listen, guys, you don't remember the

(05:05):
songs that we had. Baby, keep it real, baby last him.
I'm tired of you all of in my crew. See see,
Donald's so goddamn talented. He could sing all these songs
and remember his lines. I could only do one thing,

(05:26):
remember my lines. Well, I want to talk about that
for a second, Johnny, because Donald did. Donald. You, as
far as I see it, in the world of scrubs,
there were two extremes. There was you knowing every fucking
piece of syllable and punctuation, Mark and Donald being like
am I in the scene. Yeah, but Donald's so goddamn

(05:48):
talented that even if it took him three or four takes,
the fourth take was perfect. It was heaven. I mean
in this episode, in this episode we'll talk about in
this but there's a scene where he dances to Michael Jackson,
Michael Jackson knockoff and Billy had to be just it's
like a fair catch in football. He's just like that

(06:09):
was manna from heaven that an actor would bust that out.
That's not on the page, that was not on the page.
It wasn't. I think that's also the beginning of turk
dancing and damn near it's hussible believable, but a gift. Yeah, yeah, Johnny,
what was talk a little bit about how you did
those because sometimes, just for people that are listening, Johnny
would sometimes get those speeches the night before, because the

(06:32):
writer sometimes the day before, hours before. Absolute. Yeah, and
I just for those of you who don't memorize for
a living, it can be very hard. But doing what
Johnny had to do on the spot is sometimes close
to impossible. So I remember you having a bit of
a system, will you will you talk about that for people, Well,
I keep these composition books, you know, the composition books

(06:53):
you have in high school, those black and white things. Well,
the first thing I do is I write out the
text in my own hand, and then in the margins
have put the verbs of what I'm doing. And so
that just by virtue of writing it out starts to
get it in your skull. And then by assigning verbs
to every action that you're doing, that's the second stage.
And then if I had time, I keep a rehearsal

(07:14):
space here. I would go down and there's a whole
kind of little film studio downstairs, and I would get
in front of that. But a lot of times that
was out the window because Billy would hand it to
you on your way into the hospital. And I'm not
being method. Hospital. We did, in fact, work in a
defunct hospital. Sometimes I'll say that. The different people are like, oh,

(07:36):
you're so method. I'm like, no, I'm not fucking method.
It was a hospital, so set the fuck up. And
so I got when I got to the hospital, and
they would hand me new lines every year. Disney would
give us make it up. You guys, remember, but fifteen
hundred dollars to improve our dressing rooms, since our dressing
rooms were hospital rooms where people had died and where

(07:57):
people had been saved. And what I did with my
fifteen hundred dollars is I doubled down, and I hired
an acoustic firm, and they came in and sound proved
my dressing room so I wouldn't have to hear you
idiots in the hallway and all the dogs. For some reason,
because one or two of you brought your dogs, the
whole crew decided, well, if Zach and Donald can do it,

(08:18):
the guy in sound and the guy the productions that
he can do it. So all of a sudden there
was a pack of about the Steen dogs and as
Karma would have it, And I like dogs. I hate
most people's dogs. I just I like dogs, but I
don't like them at work. And so I remember, I
remember that. I remember all I would all you would
hear was get out. I'm trying to remember two space,

(08:42):
two pages, single space. Do you remember do you remember
in the Christmas Story how how he's always fighting the
dogs next door. That was like Johnny cur on our
floor because Johnny c was like, oh, someone shut the
dogs up. The dogs all wanted to be with Johnny
C and around absolutely and so much so that I
don't know what you guys are remembered. I don't know
what season. But I wrote a letter to our bosses

(09:05):
at Disney, to the HR Department Human Resources. And then
I did what you're supposed to do with an angry letter.
I according to my grandfather, I put it in the
drawer for two nights. You're supposed to take angry letters.
You don't press. This was not when you press send.
I wrote it and I put it in the drawer
for two nights. And in the intervening time, someone got

(09:25):
nipped by a dog on our war and Disney found
out about it, not because of me, and they were like, what,
they're seventeen dogs kissing and shitting on the third floor.
And I took that letter and I put it right
over in the shredder because I thought you were I
thought you were gonna give us a big reveal that
you had written the HR letter. But you're saying you

(09:47):
never said to it. I did not. I kept it
in the drawer. And then I was let off the hook.
Because if you're the guy who made it so that
people couldn't bring their goddamn dogs to work. Then you're
that guy. I was, look the fact that matters that
you asked, how do you memorize those things? Good fear?
Fear is a really good thing. And I was such

(10:09):
afraid to disappoint Billy and I wanted him to write
those things for me. And so you were so good
out a way to get him into my skull. You
were so good at it, John, And those rants. I
was looking on YouTube just as we were gearing up
for this episode, and just like people have like top
five Doctor Cox rants, like it's like a thing. People
love to just listen back to those, and some of

(10:31):
them are just so epic and hilarious. Where they get
hard is when Billy started and I don't know whether
it was season four or five six, it's a good problem.
When he just started writing lists that had nothing to
do with the item that came before it, and he
just write two pages of lists reasons why I don't
care about you becoming a doctor or something like that,

(10:54):
and they're just this random list. Those were hard re memorizing.
The story is if he's a cake, but these lists
two pages, single space a list. On the other side,
we were talking about how Donald would show up and
be like, oh shit, I got a monologue today. You know,

(11:15):
that was a time in my life. That was a
time in my life. I don't know, I just I
don't know what was the matter with me. I smoked.
I smoked a lot of marijuana back then too, not
that I don't now, but I smoked a tremendous amount
back then. I don't think this was the beginning of
the run that I did this. I think as I
got comfortable, things changed, and as the show got successful,

(11:37):
things changed and I slacked, and I remember somebody asking
me like, dude, what do you do when you go home?
And I was like, I live my life. They were like,
they were like, but what about your job. I was like,
it's getting done, like I was. So I think you
just got comfortable that you knew that you'd get it,
and you knew that it would be cut together and

(11:58):
it would be funny. So you're just like, well, I
don't know if I was, Yeah, you know, I don't
know what it was. Since then, I have, you know,
I've tried to make sure that if I ever ran
into anyone else, if I ran into people on other
jobs that worked with me on scrubs, and remembered how
I was on scrubs. I wanted them to have a

(12:18):
completely different opinion of me after we finished working. And
so it's, if anything, all of the you know, all
of the you know, me being unprepared and stuff like
that prepared me for later on because now forget about it.
You know, I'm like you, Johnny, if I mess up
a line, I'm putting a hole through a wall or

(12:40):
something like that. You know what I mean. I want
to get it done in three or four takes. I
want us to get out of here. If I'm not done.
If I can't do it in three takes, then forget
about it, man. Like, then I've wasted I feel like
I've wasted everybody's time. Well I feel that more, especially
now when it's not your own show. When I'm going
to do a supporting part on something and I fuck
up a line, I just I get so mad at myself.

(13:02):
You know. It's funny, you know, after doing the show
for nine years, we were so comfortable, and that comfortableness
led to a lot of amazing stuff because there was
no wrong answer, and we were so silly with each
other and we could riff. But now I find when
I go do roles where I'm not the lead, or
I'm supporting, or i'm or I'm in any whatever I'm doing.
I'm really get mad at myself if I fuck up

(13:24):
a line like I really, I really put more effort
into it than I ever have. I was about to say,
because Zach, I remember a night where you put the
sides people out there who don't know what sides are there,
the piece of paper where the line where they write,
the where they miniaturize the script into. It's just the
tiny Each day we get a tiny version of the script.
It's probably I don't know what is it, like eight
inches by four inches something like that. I remember one

(13:46):
night where you take those sides to my forehead on
off camera. Yeah, but I would like everyone to google
Marlon Brando in The Godfather and you'll see and you
can just put in like Marlin Rando Godfather line memorization
and you'll see a picture with James Kahn with a
huge poster board taped to his chest. No, I'm not

(14:10):
saying is this real? Yeah, I'll send you guys the picture.
I'm not saying I'm I'm I'm Marlon Brando. But I
am saying you're James Kahn and I, uh yeah, listen,
there's times where you go, I'm fucked. I do not
know this. Donald, Would you mind taping this to your forehead? No,
you didn't say, Donald, would your mind? You were like,
come here now, used to the fuck? I remember taking

(14:32):
them and be like you mother, I will know. What
we used to do is like, whenever there was a
place to hide them out of camera, we'd tape them
to the desk, We'd tape them to whatever. Sometimes you
tape them to the front of the camera. But I
remember that one time I couldn't get it down and
was like the time was running out, and I was like, Donald,
I'm so sorry, but I need my character needs to
be looking at your face. Johnny. You never did that. Donald,

(14:56):
Donald and I would hide our sides all over place.
I don't have any member you ever doing. Johnny used
to have like little notes here and there in your hand. No,
but not he wouldn't hide them and reference them during
the scene like you. No, no, no, no. I just
if I was struggling with Latin, which all medical terms
are Latin based, if I was struggling with something in
Latin that I hadn't been on the phone with real
JD for an hour the night before, I would I

(15:19):
would fanatically put it on those clipboards that we carried,
and the last second I'd take a look. Now, I remember,
the hardest one ever was broken heart syndrome. Was Toka
subo cardio myopathy. And that's about this long, and I
still freaking remember it took a subo cardio myopathy. Now,

(15:40):
legend has it that some of the best home tests
for movies or television shows have happened at your house.
Is it true that you once dug a hole in
your backyard or a part? No, that's not true. No,
what are you talking about. Why would he dig a
hole in his backyard? I thought he was self tape
and was digging a home. Oh oh, he's saying that you,

(16:03):
you like, got all into your self tapes and would
dig holes. What what would that be for platoon? Like
he's going to audition something. No. No, I've met with
Oliver five times. No, but you did. But you did
used to self tape at home a lot. Though at
some point, right well, when that came into vogue. Sure,
now you can do it on this thing, but for
a little while, you know, there's a camera on a
tripod down there was down in the rehearsal space and yeah,

(16:27):
for a little while. That that's what auditions this came
to be. Yeah, Johnnie, that's a good segue into into
your auditioning for this. Well you, Donald and I and
we asked Sarah to talk a little bit about our
experiences are hilarious, right listen. I listened to all of
it yesterday. It was genius. So tell us about yours

(16:47):
because we don't and you heard bills telling of yours.
But I think I think our fans are interested in
and how it all came to be. Do you remember,
like your very first time reading and all that. Yeah,
because you had already been in so many other things
before this. I know you were coming to it from
a very different space because you'd been in such amazing
movies and uh, and I just wanted you know, Donald

(17:08):
had had done some work. I had done virtually nothing,
So how is it different for you? I was coming
from because I heard Zachie, I heard yours with that
you were a waiter at the Luck Colonial. Yeah, yeah,
you were a waiter over there, and I know Donald
had done Denzel's movie and done something but I was

(17:29):
on a track and how how how to take something
off of this? So it Doesen's on arrogant, but I
was on about uh. I was on a track of
doing about four films a year, and in my brain
it was that if you ever, I said yes to everything.
So I did plenty of stinkers, but I just always
felt like that more film begat more film. So I

(17:50):
was just always around the world doing whatever you offered me.
And I wasn't going to come off the film train.
And so then they sent me scrubs and there was
a as Billy told you, there was a John McGinley
part uh in in parentheses it said a John McGinley
type for doctor Cox. And I'm like, we'll just make

(18:12):
the offer and as yeah. So I went into meet
Billy over at Disney and that was great. He was,
you know, was one of the great guys in the planet.
And then by the time, actors do this weird thing
when they get a little too comfortable as they subvert themselves,

(18:35):
and I felt like I did that because there were
tears of different hierarchy that you had to go through
on this thing. There was the casting people, which I
got to skip there was Billy. Then you had to
audition to Disney, then you had to audition at NBC.
And so I tanked the one at Disney. And I
don't know why. I was either lazy or presumptuous or

(18:58):
but a sock. Did you know when you Johnny, did
you did you feel that in the room? I always know, Yeah,
And so I told I said, Billy, just let me
go to the next level and I'll blow the back
of the room out. Just just don't don't. I just
fouled a few off at at at Disney. And when
I went to NBC, as you guys have have have

(19:20):
sorted it out with Billy and Sarah, there's a room
not much bigger than the one I'm sitting in, maybe
sixteen by twenty, and it's the casting guy's room. And
there's people on the fennel there, on the on the fence.
There's people everywhere hiding on the ground over it's it's
it's like a bad Thanksgiving talent show production with your

(19:41):
aunts and uncles. And so I didn't recognize there were
four or five other doctor Coxes there. I didn't I
didn't recognize any of them. Um, And I was just
like it didn't really matter because I already did. Just
for actors, you can get good at auditioning, and I
got really good at it because I used the rehearsal

(20:02):
space as a spot to get this four minute, compressed
little impression you make discipline down. I got really good
at it. The fact that I tanked that Disney didn't matter.
I was doing some other bullshit, but when I went
into that room, I was just gonna fucking kill it.
And I did. And when I shut the door, and

(20:23):
at the time, I had this Jersey muscle car. I
had a Mustang five point zero black convertible and I
started driving home on the one on one and I
was like, I put Bruce on and it was blaring,
and I'm like, I definitely got that. And if I
didn't get the show sucks built. Do your Build's story
where he said, Johnny, how do you feel it? You
said like cash money or something like that. I said

(20:45):
it was money. I said funny. I said if you
want to do it again? And I'm like, no, I
hate when directors say do you want to do it again?
Because if you got it, you got it, because all
I do when I do things again. When you asked me,
I'm gonna start changing things. And I hate rewriting if everything,
so I like to rewrite shit. I don't like to

(21:05):
rewrite anything. I like it on the page. I like
to crush it, and I like to leave. And then
if you asked me to keep doing it again and again,
I'm gonna get bored because I know you haven't in
the can and I'm gonna start changing things. And what
I did with doctor Cox over the years is so
I changed his syncopation. I turned into this kind of
Martin Scorcese on LSD thing where I did these long

(21:27):
pauses and because I was getting bored and sometimes he'd
walking out and do some like like crazy pause, I was,
and I would stretch these words and when people love that,
when you go he I was bored, fucking sort. I
wanted more challenges. And so that's the actor's brains if

(21:50):
it's really firing, like our brains were on that thing. Remember,
people don't understand we were there sixteen hours a day,
five days a week. We spent much more time with
each other than we did any semblance of family because
there's a finite amount of hours in a week. And
for nine years, pretty much we were together for fourteen
to by the end of the week, sixteen hours and

(22:12):
an hospital in an abandoned in an abandoned hospital. And
it's almost like Donald will understand when you're practice and
free throws. If you do nothing but practice free throws,
you will get good at it. You just will. And
by virtue of beat, just scrub saturation, people got really
good at their jobs. Yeah. Yeah, that was the other thing.

(22:35):
I remember times where you'd have like long, long monologues.
There were times where you didn't get it in one take,
but then there were times where you would get it
in one take, and I remember directors being like, should
we go again, and you're being like, we got it,
let's go, And you'd be like, we only got one take, John,
and I don't move it on, let's go. There's so
many Donald, let's go through some of our favorite johnnyisms.

(22:55):
One that just came to my mind was moving on,
there's five good ones for you. There's five good ones
for you. Was when it would shake your hand, how
are you better now? Yeah? Better now? And then he'd go, um,
when we were done with John Michelle was the name
of one of our editors, And when when when we
were done with the scene, he'd go, I think we
gave Jean Michelle some mammo. Yeah. Cut to cut to

(23:21):
a couple of days later, I'm down in the editing
suite just micromanaging everything John Michelle was doing. All right. No,
you were always that's where that was like your that
was your that was your escape from hanging out on
the third floor from from from the Dogs, from the Dogs.
You just run down to editing and be like, show
me what you got. But I also had a post
production company in New York for when I when I

(23:41):
lived in New York up in the Brill Building for
fifteen years, and so post is a very comfortable place
for me. Yeah stuff, yeah, and uh and and I
just remember you being Donald and I were always trying
to sneak in there as well, and you'd be like,
I remember, I have great memories of you being like,
come in here, you gotta see that you well. But

(24:02):
people have to understand it was a very insular place.
There was no place to go. It was Scrubs University
in this five story abandoned hospital, and you had to
be there. You couldn't really go off campus. You'd get
in trouble because invariably would skip a scene and would say,
where's John and he went down to do something, so

(24:25):
he can't go down to do anything. Yeah, it's interesting
to be on When you're on a back lot, you
can saunter around and you can talk to other shows,
and you can talk to people that have nothing to
do with your show. But there was something I think,
uh great that happened on our show in that we
were so insular, like Johnny said in that hospital, that

(24:46):
it made us extra close because we never went anywhere.
It wasn't like we just all were always together. And
I think something Billy didn't share, which I've brought to
different films and TV shows I've produced since, is Billy
introduced the first or second day of shooting in the cafeteria,
which is the largest space that one hundred and twenty

(25:09):
person crew could all congregate. He got everybody together and
he told them that he was going to put a
no asshole policy in place, and everybody laughed, and you know,
it sounded kind of stupid, and Billy's the least confrontational
person on the planet, And what he meant was that
if you come to work, you got to bring at
least a modicum of respect with you, otherwise don't come.

(25:33):
And everybody knows, just all the way back to the schoolyard,
how to be nice to each other and how to
be respectful. And a couple of people subsequently got fired
for the nosshole policy. It didn't mean you had to
come to work and walk on pins and needles, but
you had to come to work and be respectful. And
I thought that was great, and I do it on
my sets now too, and if people don't like it,

(25:54):
they can get the fuck out. Yeah, that's that's real talk.
You know. Since Scrubs, I've been a part of a
cast where you know, everybody's been chill and lovely and
everything like that, but there's there's that one time where
you have that one person where you're like, oh my god,
I wish I was still on Scrubs right now so
I could freaking sit in a background and watch you

(26:16):
get fired from being such a fucking asshole right now,
you know what I mean. It's not that complicated, It
really isn't. It's really easy to be a good person.
We were really lucky, I think, though. I mean, there's
so many casts that when you hear about a show
that you know, there's there's a finite number of shows
that go this long. And we genuinely all really liked
each other. I mean I always say that when I
do press or someone asked me about the show, and

(26:38):
you know, what was the secret to the magic, and
one of them is that we genuinely all liked each other.
We genuinely all rooted for each other. When we would
see each other at the bar after after we wrapped,
we were like just as excited to see you know,
Johnny walk in the door. We um and that didn't
wear off. I mean, we we we we genuinely all

(26:59):
loved each other his company for for nine years. Yeah,
you know that's you know, that's that's that's actually very true.
We partied so hard. After sixteen hours of hanging out
with each other at the day, you would still be like, yo,
Fox and a Hound still has about two more hours
until it closes, and we'd all congregate at Fox and

(27:22):
a Hound. After spending the whole day and some of
the night together, Man, I would I would go back
to my hospital room and go to sleep for the
night because I couldn't drive out to Malibu. And so
after after having a couple of beers. I went back
to the hospital and went sleep wow, and they just
woke up the next and Johnny tell him about how
sometimes you'd come in to beat traffic at like four

(27:42):
in the morning. I would. I had this thing where
I can't be late. It's I just can't. I just
it's I can't organize being late. And so, uh, my
window was I could leave in a normal time if
I had a call time at six or at ten,
But if my call time was anywhere queen six and ten,
I would take a six o'clock call time and just

(28:04):
drive in at five, go to sleep for a couple hours,
memorize all that shit that Billy was writing, and then
be fresh and ready to go. And Plus there was
a shower. There was a communal shower at the end
of our hallway, and I used that thing all the time.
I'm never I think I never showered their dumb I
think maybe once or twice. Oh god, I was in

(28:27):
there every day. Was it was it a good shower?
Was it a it was hot water? I don't care.
All right, We're gonna go to a break um and
we'll be right and we're bad and we're back. We

(28:48):
are back, Donald Dumb whenever he was Johnson McGinley. Whenever
Donald does these ins and outs of a commercial, he
turns into Oprah, We're back. I heard him do that.
But Sarah, because I was listening to it on the
deck and I was dying, I could have given you.
I could have totally given you an Oprah introduction, John

(29:09):
seem My, good night. I was. I was thinking about
the one oh seven, which is interesting that we would
be doing one oh seven, which when I looked in
my composition book, it was actually one oh six, and
it got it got shifted because of nine to eleven
y and but before we get into the nine to

(29:29):
eleven of it all, which has a profound impact on
this episode. When I was looking through my composition book
down in the rehearsal space last night, when I was
looking forward to talking to you guys, I noticed that
I always in the first if you're lucky enough to
have to write a lot of different composition books like
we were on Scrubs, I always put a mission statement
on the first page of what I John not I

(29:53):
doctor Cox want to do with this thing. And I
saw that the mission statement on Scrubs was to find
a place underneath the text for with every episode where
you can say I love you to Max. And I
took that seriously because my son Max had been born
a year or two earlier, and when we started in

(30:14):
two thousand and one and Max was born with challenges
Max and born with Down syndrome. He's doing great now.
But I decided that Cox underneath it all, so that
when never became too drippy, just underneath it. Every episode
there had to be one spot where I got to
say I John, not doctor Cox, got to say I

(30:35):
love you to Max. And in this episode it's it's
right where when I'm talking to Judy and I said,
just because a guy has problems, that doesn't mean he
doesn't need and then there's this long pause and it's
because I kept getting an apple in my throat and
then he says you and I was from I reminded
me that I took the thing so goddamn seriously. This

(30:58):
mission state that I wrote to Max, and it informs
everything that Cox does, because I think Zachie knows this.
I always consider the camera an X ray machine that
it can see through all the actors bullshit, and we
all try to bring a walk and a lisp or
some eccentricity, and unless that's distilled down to a real,

(31:21):
pure instinct, the camera's just like bullshit. That's bullshit, and
you can see it. It's night and day. And so
that when an actor or actually brings a mission statement
that demands that he finds a place somewhere in the
text underneath it, not just underneath the text, to say
I love you to a kid who's just born with

(31:42):
challenges that pops. The camera goes, Oh, that's his truth,
that he's telling the truth, and that's what pops. I
love that you said that, Johnny, because I think one
of the magical things that you did with Doctor Cox
was find a guy who's so tough and find a
way in every episode to show that his heart, that

(32:04):
he was doing everything he can to protect everyone, protect
his heart and from people seeing the amount of love
he actually had. He had super, super tough cement exterior
because he was alpha and he was a badass doctor
and he didn't want people to know. But then you
would just it was like it was leaking out of him.
You could you couldn't help it, and you would see

(32:25):
these little moments where it's like this guy has the
biggest heart. He's just keeping it all under wraps. That's
perfect for this episode that we're talking about right now,
one oh seven. Carla is the only person in the
hospital who's known you long enough at this point to
be able to see through that bullshit. Okay, you're being
tough on all of these people, but you care. You're

(32:47):
You're in it just like you know what I mean.
You're not scared, but you care. And I think that's
what started you, what started Cox? Uh? Correct me if
I'm wrong to have feelings for her, like, Okay, well,
if everybody's afraid of me and there's this one person
in the hospital who's willing to stand up to me,
not even stand up, but to call me on my bullshit,

(33:09):
there's a there's a special place in my heart for that.
And I honestly thought that Carla was going to choose
you know, when we were making the show, I thought
she was going to choose Cox over Turk. I was
kind of hoping at that when I was younger, that
she would choose Cox over Turk so that I have
more love interests. Oh my god, I can't wait to

(33:33):
talk about that with Judy when she comes on the show,
you know, the writers, the writers, as Donald was suggesting,
out of that writer's room came different nuanced flirtations between
Cox and Carla. I never noticed that this one is
obviously really prevalent, and I hadn't, I hadn't seen this
in twenty years, but I was like, there's a vibe
between those two last for the next like five six episodes,

(33:55):
and absolutely, yeah, it's and then and then Cox and
Turk have it out. And then do you remember thinking, Donald,
do you remember thinking like, because we didn't know what
the fun the writers were gonna do you remember thinking like,
oh shit, is Judy is Are they gonna write her
to go off with him? Yeah? I remember thinking that
because they had history. That's the one thing that the
two of them out of everyone in the show, and

(34:17):
also u Ken's character Kelso the three of them all
have history. But Cox and Carla have history. Like I
imagine Carla Cox was a very young doctor when Carla
came in, you know what I mean, Like, you know
what I mean? She had been there, Carla, Carla had
been there for a while, and so they knew each other.
They may have done they may have hooked up. That's

(34:38):
what I thought I thought there was that one time
I was watching today, I was like, these two looks
like the two characters have history. Yeah, absolutely yeah, and
that that that that we're gonna take it to our
grave and never speak about this history, right. And I
like Donald and like you Zachi, I unabashedly love Judy,

(35:00):
and so that was an easy thing to groove into.
You guys had great chemistry and I and I and
I was really noticing that again we're watching all these
with fresh eyes after so many years, and I was
watching this one, I was really I don't know, I
just was reminded how good those scenes are when it
was you two. You guys had amazing chemistry together. Absolutely,

(35:22):
I don't think there's any acting going on. Like I say,
the camera is an X ray machine and it can
see through bullshit, and it could see that I love
Judy rays unabashador and I always had Well, let's get
into the elephant in the room, because I was actually
really nervous to watch this episode. It's the first one
that I was like, I had a pit in my

(35:43):
stomach because, as Johnny touched on, this was the episode
we were shooting when nine to eleven occurred. Nine to
eleven happened on a Tuesday. Well, we had shot Monday
and then nine to eleven occurred, and we should all
tell our stories of that day. I think. I remember
I woke up to Howard Stern, you know when you're

(36:05):
half awake and you're listening, and Howard Stern was talking
about it, and it got to a point where I went,
wait what And I leapt up out of bed and
I went and turned on the TV. And I remember thinking,
as we all did, holy shit, this is what the
fuck's happening in the world. But also as a young
actor who just got on a job, I was like,
what are we supposed to do here? We do we

(36:26):
go to work today? Like how And I remember I
still was like, I think I'm supposed to still go
to work. So I went in and I remember Sean Hayes,
who was our guest star, was there, and he and
I sat in my dressing room and watched it happened,
and shortly that thereafter the day was was canceled. Do

(36:47):
you guys want to want to tell what your memory
of that? Yeah? I remember getting a phone call and
it was like five o'clock in the morning. I remember
picking up the phone and recognizing the number and cursing
the person out on the other what the fuck is
your problem? I'm working, I got work in a couple
of hours. How why are you calling me this early?
You know what I mean? And she said, and she

(37:11):
over the phone goes, I'm sorry, shit, sorry, I just
wanted to tell you that a plane crashed into the
World Trade Center. And I was like, oh shoot, I'm sorry.
Whoa what? What? Wait? What? What? And I ran to
the television and I turned it on, and like everybody
else in America, I was stuck watching television for and
then Randall finally called him, was like, we're not coming

(37:33):
in to work, you know, but today the day is canceled.
You don't have to come in. But I remember just
sitting in front of the television very much like I
am right now, you know what I mean. I feel
like I wake up every morning and my and and
the minute I wake up, I turned on the news
to check to see how many people have COVID nineteen,
how many people we lost because of COVID nineteen, and

(37:55):
what the plan is to figure out how we're going
to get rid of COVID nineteen. You know what I mean,
and you know very for the next week, I remember,
that was all that I did was I just watched
the news to see what the heck is America going
to do next? How about you, Johnny, were you called
in that day? Yeah, I went back and looked it
up last night. So the North Tower got hit at

(38:16):
five forty five am, and I would have left about
ten minutes after that to get there. And so I
saw the first well they didn't really show the first
but it looked like a plane went into the first building,
and then I had to go. And so the South
Tower got hit about twenty two minutes later at six
h three our time, nine oh three New York time,

(38:38):
and so I would have been listening to it on
the news. But all of this, to me, there's something
called a mental model, and it's how you perceive things.
In my mental model, it was it was like the
plane that hit the Empire State Building before we were born.
There was a prop plane that went into the Empire
State Building and nothing really happened, not nothing. I'm sure
some people died and it was horrible, but it sounded

(39:00):
like that, And so that's how I was driving into
Burbank and when I got there, that clearly wasn't the case.
And then my brother worked on the sixty second floor
of the South Tower, and so I kept trying to
call him and so, and pretty early on it became

(39:21):
clear that nobody was going to get through on any lines,
on cell lines or landlines, because those everything disconnected on
those towers, and so I couldn't get through to my brother.
And this is when an actor's imagination is a curse,
not a blessing. You only imagine horrible things. And it
turns out in those eighteen twenty minutes, those intervening times

(39:42):
between the North Tower getting hit and the South Tower
getting hit, on March trading desk, they all had been
there when they shake from Newark, New Jersey, had set
off that bomb in the van in the basement ten
years earlier. So every monument Mark's trading desk got up
when the first building got hit and they started to

(40:04):
make their way down the stairs. But it was such
a clusterfuck going down the stairs in those eighteen minutes
from the sixty second floor down, they only made it
about twenty stories. Everybody from like seventy two up died,
and so Mark got a concussion going down the stairs.
I don't know how. He got really disoriented, and by
the time he got out of the building, he wandered

(40:25):
up the FDR Drive to East Harlem, and so he
was missing for about twelve hours. And so he made
it all the way to Harlem. Yes, holy cow, was
he just in shock, Johnny? And he walked up far Yes.
And so I sat in the hospital for all that time,

(40:46):
and then I tried his wife, who lived out in
Short Hills, New Jersey at the time. She only had
an outgoing message on her machine saying, uh, Mark, I
know you're okay. I've gone over to the Smith's house
and we're waiting for your call there. Well, no calls
came for about twelve hours, and so I sat in
the dressing room thinking horrible things. And then obviously the

(41:10):
buildings came down shortly after that, and what almost four
thousand Americans died. Uh, And so that was a that's
the backdrop for us shooting this episode. Yeah, it's kind
of miraculous that the episode even makes any sense that
because of what some of some people were carrying into

(41:30):
the frame. I agree. I think it's a weird episode,
and I don't I don't know if I'm bringing my
own anxiety of of of of the time to it
as I watch it now, but I'm also going we
were all not present for these however many days, and
I felt like, especially when you look at the first
episode Chunk that we've just watched, which you're like, holy shit,

(41:51):
look at this show. Look at their fire and all cylinders.
This is the first one where I go, oh, we
all understandably, obviously we all look a little based out
to me. That's when I watched it last night. I mean,
there's obviously a lot of funny stuff in it that
I wrote down that made me laugh, but it and again,
like you, Zachie, I can't tell if it's me imposing

(42:15):
my John McGinley onto what Billy Lawrence created for those
twenty one minutes. But if you just said disconnected it
it seemed a little disconnected to me this one. Yes, absolutely,
but how could it not be? Right? Yeah? Right, yeah?
If mcginley's brother, If mcginley's brother just got out of

(42:35):
the what was the South Tower and was missing for
a day, what do you, superman? Of course you're going
to carry that in front of the lens, now, do
you guys. Remember we took that Tuesday off. Did we
work the next day or take that day off as well?
I think we took Wednesday off and we worked Thursday. Yeah,
now I do remember this. I remember the very first
thing we came back, believe it or not, was that

(42:57):
fucking dog show fantasy. So I remember feeling horribly guilty
that we should a should we even be working. But
I'm under a contract and I'm an actor and I'm
not going to ruffle anybody's feathers, but it should be
we be working. But then like, yes, everyone's back to work.
Here we go, and I was like, Okay, what are
we shooting? I can do this. We're gonna do a

(43:18):
fantasy where you're a dog at a dog show and
Johnny c is going to feel your balls. And that
was like the first thing up, Johnny, do you remember that?
It was the first thing up. It must have been
Thursday morning, was me. I remember going to watch it.
I remember it. Oh my god, I remember that. I
wrote down. I wrote down that during the dog show flashback,

(43:39):
I had decided to make you both really uncomfortable. And
I think it was because I was really uncomfortable. So
I love actors, and I would never do anything to
ever ever heard of an actor, especially when it comes
to a physical contact. And I think I was just
I was not appropriately gentle with you guys. I like,
took your ear, Zachie and you can see, and I
took your fucking mouth and I opened it up and

(44:01):
I talked. I took Seawan's ere and I was I
was uncharacteristically for me as an actor, not cox, but
I love actors so much. I would never ever do
anything to hurt them, and I would think I was.
I was not appropriate with you two guys on that.
I was very rough. I remember being manhandled. Um. Thank
you for pantomiming the testicle part though, because I think

(44:24):
that would have been a little too rough on on
on me. You know, I'm sure at some point I
put my fist up your Wreckum. I don't think so,
at least not in this episode. That may have been
in later. I think you did wear me like a
hand puppet, but it was in episode four. I think
during the dog show thing, I may have engaged you. Well.
We were joking with Bill about how the crazy sound

(44:46):
effects would would would were slowly phased out. I don't
know maybe because you were all off in this episode.
But this episode has so many ridiculous side effects, so
many and there's the there's like a Santa sleigh jingle
bell noise when you grow my balls. That's like the
choice that was made somewhere in sound effect editing. They

(45:08):
were like, Um, okay, what's the noise for Johnny grabbing
Jad's balls? Guys? How about us Santa slave at jingle jinglebow?
You know what? I you know what I thought was
really funny, Zachy when you and Kenny are up on
the roof, um and he goes to he does kind
of a fake attacking you up on the roof. Yeah,
And whether or not you're just a great actor or

(45:31):
if it was really weird, it looked really weird. It's
a weird scene. By the way, can I just understand
he calls you a pansy. He goes you know what
your problem is? Yeah, is that you're a pansy. It's
just straight up it's a weird scene. And I was
waiting for something to happen. I remember there was a
fantasy where I where I fell off a roof and

(45:51):
there was a stuntman who did a big jump and
I thought, oh, is that this but it doesn't really
go anywhere, and Ken's just up there smoking a pipe.
He calls me a pansy and then almost throws me
off the roof, like legit, and then like that's the scene.
That's it, And and a couple of scenes before that
at Mine forty four, when when he goes keep shooting

(46:12):
you the um, he gums ober and gives you a hug,
and then Kenny wraps his leg around. I think that's
a fantasy, Johnny, I will I. I didn't know what
the fuck was happening there either, and then there's a
white flash out of it. I think that's JD's fantasy,
because why his leg around you mounted? Laugh? Well, I
just want to say, I think that's I wrote down that.

(46:34):
I think that's the only time in nine years that
Ken Jenkins ever mounted me. Can we talk? Can we
talk about jerking off real quick? Yeah? Big as a
part of the show or just in your own life?
Just yeah, we could talk about it both. Let's talk
about both. How about that? Okay? Good, okay. So here's
here's here's the one thing. I get that. First of all,

(46:56):
we have two callbacks to mash. We have you as
a kid playing with your brother. Right, And this scene,
the whole jerkeoff scene is actually a scene from mash
Don't movie, if I'm correct, where they trick somebody to
go into the bathroom and jerk off. When did jerking
off become a bad thing that you got to be

(47:17):
embarrassed about? Well, but you're not. You're not supposed to
jerk off at work. Donald, write that down. It's a
sound pass as a surgeon, got it? So wait, hold on, Okay,
So that's so we're clear. It's okay to masturbate, but
once you do it at work, you've crossed the line. Yes,
I think this kind of service announcement. This could be
a public service announcement for people all over the world.

(47:40):
Don't masturbate at work. It's crossing the line. The more
you know, the dan you can put in a little more.
You know, you known effect there. I saw something. I
saw something When Donald and I get to do the
scene of that comes before this, when in the cafeteria

(48:00):
and I tell you to go to go and uh,
what's the town I tell you to go to, like
spank town or something like something like that. I forgot.
But what I'm Palmville, and I have a pet peeve
with actors who wait until they swallow their food to
say a line. And if you notice in that thing,

(48:23):
I always take the soup to hear. It doesn't go in. No,
it never does. Don't. I never eat. I never eat,
by the way, it's disgusting. No, whenever there's you will.
If you ever see me eating in anything I've ever done,
it's it's rare. I owe it. My character is always
done because I don't want to deal with all the
continuity and eating. Of course, Okay, people are starting to

(48:45):
notice that actors aren't eating on television shows or in
movies now. Before ahead before people didn't necessarily notice. That's
something that I think people are starting to notice now.
Other than Brad Pitt, No one eats, no one Whenever
I see someone legit eating, Like whenever I see someone
I watch a scene and someone's like eating, I'm like,
oh my god, they ate like that for probably four hours.

(49:08):
Not correct. My character is always done, always, but also
if it gets in the way of the actor saying
the line, and we have to wait for those of
us in a big family, nobody waits to talk until
they swallow there's food in their mouth. They just segregated
over into kind of a chipmunk cheek and then they
just fire out the words otherwise you'll lose the floor

(49:29):
at the dinner table. Did you guys have go to
meals that you know they were always There are lots
of scenes where were supposed to have food in front
of us. Did you guys have a go to thing
you would ask to be in front of you? Steak, steak,
me soup because you never have to eat it. Yeah,
I just I'm gonna steal that, Johnny, because I'm always
have a plate of I would always tell them, can
you make it look like I'm done? And like you know,

(49:49):
and because this season with soup you can just the spoon.
The prop of the spoon is, it's indefatigable, it's perfect.
It can you can and plush, you can quoll it
at somebody. You can the top of the spoon, you
use this phone. I always went for steak because I
could eat steak forever. I could eat steak like nobody's business.

(50:12):
So you were eating, you were and you were an eater. No,
but if I did have like there was that one
episode where I did have to eat and because Turk
gets really bad heartburn. And it's when Head the Lockleier
was on the show and John c myself and Head
the Lockleier at some benefit and Carlos supposed to meet
us there and she never shows up and I wind

(50:34):
up eating a bunch of steak and end up in
the hospital with really bad heartburn. So I always went.
I always went for steak because I could eat it.
It tastes good, it's easy the season. Throw some salt
on it, you know what I mean. It's it's good
to go. I thought there were a couple different times

(50:55):
in this episode where despite everything, the ensemble work in
one where you is where you passed the torch to
Sean and Sean just fits right into the style of
the piece, like he just takes the torch, We pan
with you, out of frame, we come back, Shan's put
the torch down, and you guys just keep doing your thing.
That I was cleverly directed, And I want to say,

(51:18):
it's a rare moment where that's obviously a fantasy and
there was no flash in out of it. I was
clocking that because you know, Bill always delineated a fantasy
with a with a little white flash and that noise,
and this is one of those rare times where the
torch is a character, a proper character in the piece,
and there's no it's both times it comes in, it's

(51:39):
just handed off and not really discussed. What's also what's
also interesting with Sean is Sean's introduction, which would become
a classic Scrubs introduction, especially with beautiful females with wind
and slow mow entrances as they walk down the hall.
Sean gets to come in on top of a gurney
save someone's life and it's just glorious. Dude, I wrote

(52:02):
that down, Johnny. I'm glad you brought that up because
I wrote that down. I think that might be the
best entrance other than other than Dick van Dyke. Dick
van Dyke's entrance is pretty amazing too, but that might
be one of the best entrances for male in Scrubs history. Yeah,
all right, Joel, do we need to go a break
where we take to go to these lovely people? All right,

(52:25):
We're gonna go take another break and we come back.
We have questions from some fans that are calling in,
and they're gonna have an amazing question I'm sure probably
for the legendary Johnny C mcginliy. I'll give you a hint.
Her name's Ashley. We have a caller. Ladies and gentlemen,

(52:50):
welcome to the show. Ashley Cooper, harrow it and friend?
Do you how much money? Do you? How much money
it had cost us to get Oprah to do all
these introductions of our guests. It's fortune? Hi, guys, um
why why did why did Joelle um imply that there
was something unique and special about you? Guys? So I

(53:12):
wrote in earlier this week, I was looking if I
could figure out a way for you to to do
like a birthday shout out. This is my husband, Alexander. Hi, Alexander,
husband Alexander. Oh my god, he is that quisition and
absolutely loves your show. What's up? Man? How's it? Goal? Deal? Now?
Donald changed show? Donald changed Donald respectful voice. Let me

(53:37):
show that respect? What is good? Not too glad? There's
this right before work. I'm about to head out of
here in about an hour. Oh man, Wow, you're the
real deal. Very much, so much, very very much for
for calling in. Uh who's going to ask the question?
He is awesomethay? Oh happy birthday too, happy birthday? Too

(54:04):
happy birthday? We called it birthday. He's a grown man,
as you know. He works in the hospital, not like us.
We were fake doctors on a TV show. Yes, bringing

(54:25):
it Home? Yes? So wait, did you not know about this?
Is this a surprise? I found out I kept it
a surprise for maybe forty five seconds. And don't you
should have kept it a surprise until you guys zoomed in?
How cool would that been? But then you never know.
You would have been like, who are these guys? Who
are these guys? Wait? Who are these guys? All right, guys,

(54:48):
go ahead, Sure, So I guess the biggest question is
I guess what it came down through is I watched
a lot of the different type of medical shows, and
I found that throughout my training so far, and I
was attending so far that the show of Scrubs actually
portrays how the hospital life really works the most accurate
of all the medical shows, despite it being primarily a comedy. Well,

(55:09):
that something that Bill purposely did. Was that something that
the staff tried to incorporate, because I, I mean I
listened to the first one, I said, like Donald really
good the round the hospital, I was I was. I
was absolutely right. I was so afraid to go into
the hospital at that point. Listen. Since then, I've you know,
I've developed a listen if something's wrong, or if I

(55:31):
feel like something's wrong, I'm going right to my primary
and we're gonna talk about it. Before that, though, I
was just like every other person. You know, in the
African American community, we have a stigma when it comes
to doctors. We are very afraid of the bad news.
And you think I'm joking, But this is the honest
and goodness truth. And I've done I've done PSA after

(55:54):
PSA about talking, you know, talking about you know, going
and getting your numbers known, get your CELESTEROL, get your
your BMI, your your blood pressure, your blood I love
You're trying to list them to an ear doc. I'm
just trying to listen. He was like, he's like blue closer.
You're like, no, no, no, there's four, there's uh anyway,

(56:18):
But well, Johnny, Johnny, why don't you answer because you're
the special guest about about his question? Um. I had
spent the first three weeks of my son's life a
couple of years earlier in the neo natal intensive care unit,
and I carried most of that was that functioned largely
as all the homework I ever needed for medical um

(56:40):
replica trying to to to do medical stuff. And uh
Max had different challenges born downs in rome and he
had microscopic holes in his heart. Also we had infantel teasers.
We had all sorts of different challenge. But if you
spend if you're the acron import is the nick you,
If you spent three or four weeks in the nick you,
you should get enough of that on you to be

(57:02):
able to tell the truth in front of the lens.
And so that that's largely what I was trying to
honor when we were doing that Medical Scripts. I think
I think Bill also has said, um, you know, we
knew we were going to be silly, and we knew
we were gonna have these crazy fantasies, and we knew
in a lot in a lot of ways it was
gonna be a comedy. So he wanted the baseline. He

(57:24):
wanted to drop in for all the medicine to be
as accurate as possible and um and that was also
something that John Doris wanted to the real j D wanted.
He was like, listen, you can make fun of all
of the things we did that I did in college
and stuff like that, but it has to be grounded
at the end of the day. Don't make a fool

(57:44):
of us, you know what I mean. Make sure that
that there's truth behind everything as well. Yeah, I think
that that that's one of the reasons works and the matter.
I think the American Medical Association has said, which we
always thought was bizarre, but that they said that this
was the most medical accurate of all the medical shows. Um,
so we always took that as a badge of honor,

(58:05):
and I think Bill was really, really, really proud of that.
He said, we can be as silly as we want
to be. When we get into the medicine, it's all
gonna be gonna be real. And also, yeah, once you
get that, once you get that tag where you got
where someone says to you, you guys are the most
medically accurate, you don't ever want to fall off that
that bandwagon. You want to stay. You want to stay
on that. You want to make sure that every story,

(58:25):
at least in the first at least in the first
eight seasons. I don't know about season nine, but in
the first eight seasons, we made sure to stick to
the actual script to keep it real. As they say, oh,
is that an expression? I hear the kids say that nowadays.
Do you have another question? Yeah, go ahead, so that'll

(58:47):
be the I guess. The more hey are, the more
difficult question easier. One is what keep tikes? Did you
guys get so rowdy? Didn't get taken with you guys?
But what about like the tiki necklaces or anything like that.
I'm not a I'm not a supnir guy, so I
don't ever. I shouldn't taken stuff from a lot of sets.
But it's not. I always thought it was bad luck.

(59:08):
I never You don't know any scrubs whatsoever. I don't
have any scrubs in my house. I think it's a
I think it's a jinx. What what about the kicks?
Because Nike sent us a bunch of kicks when we
were making that show. That's different. Swags are different than Yeah,

(59:32):
I don't have any. I have the I have the
slates from episodes I directed, you know the thing we
clap in front of the lens you're directing them. Yeah,
And then I have the I have the antlers from
when we did the pilot when I was a deer
in headlights. Donald is showing you his his sneakers, hundredth
episode Sneakers. Look how warn and ruined they are. I've
rocked these for like a year. I put mine on

(59:53):
a shelf and save them, and they're mint and Donald's
are all fucked up. I'm so proud of these, and
look and look there, that's the best rewraps on the
planet for for for Christmas, you guys. Well, one thing
that's funny about this podcast on the Zoom Call is
that whenever Donald wants to reference a piece of clothing,
he doesn't have to move from his seat. He just
reaches out of frame and pulls it in. Well, we

(01:00:16):
are in my closet. No, it's just funny. Like you've
done that a few times now, you know. It's not
even like you have to stand, You just reach out
of frame and pull out. Well, I'm on my side.
I mean I'm in like I'm in, like I'm on
my side. So like all of this is me, this
is my wife's stuff. So if I read I'm never
I was. You know, what I was thinking about doing
was turning it all around and doing it from a
different angle. But I think I just confuse everyone. No,

(01:00:37):
I love this. I will forever remember this time of
doing this podcast and staring at you like it looks
like you're sitting on the ground in your closet. You know,
it's not every day that we have a real live
doctor on the show, and so this is this is

(01:00:57):
this is a pretty special thing. Uh. If you have
any other questions, feel free to ask us. O'donald's giving
you the rare third question. It's never been bestowed. It's
because you're a real doctor. It's never been bestowed upon
anyone in all seven episodes of Fake Doctor's Real Friends.
All Right, what was the most emotionally difficult episode that

(01:01:17):
you guys did? Yes, good, Johnny, what's up? I thought
this one would have to be right up there, just
getting through this one and trying to to hue to
the style of the piece and not fall too deep
keep into an eleven of it all it was. It
was impossible. But Johnny, we have to give a nod

(01:01:39):
to one of the best episodes ever where you were
just incredibly good in that Brendan Frasier uh dying episode. Yeah,
but that that that we got to act, that was acting.
This was this was real life, just killed four thousand people,
and it was I thought it was almost impossible to
get through this episode. And when I watched it and
it actually just made sense. Us didn't make sense. Yeah

(01:02:02):
is good. Yeah, not great, This is good. Yeah, But
I was gonna say it still has some really genuinely
funny parts, and the emotion that Sean has at the
end of the episode, and even and the emotion that
you have with Carla at the end of the episode.
You talked about that earlier in the podcast, about how
it gave you a lump in your throat and everything
like that because you were speaking your truth at that moment.

(01:02:25):
But I stuff right right, absolutely. I think stuff like
the potassium and asked Tim and TikTok Clarice. Those things
caught me off guard last night when I was watching it.
I also, I'm sorry to be I'm sorry to be
the guy who laughs at a fart joke, but I
legit laughed so hard when when Todd goes the wording

(01:02:47):
of this line is so funny, sir, I farted long pause.
That smell is from the fart that I made. You
know he were heard that line, But the wording of
that the wording of that. I think that's the funniest

(01:03:07):
thing in the whole episode, to be honest, and I'm
sorry to be so so simple that I love a
fart joke that much, but I just thought the wording
of that, that smell pause is from the fart that
I made. Meanwhile, the surgeon, what's his name? Is in there? Like,
what's what's that smell? From? What the hell happened? What's

(01:03:28):
going on? Who was that actor? That actor did a
good job, Charles kind of a thankless role. Yeah, he
you know, he's been in a lot of movies. Actually
to uh, he was in um, he was in Dumb
and Dunk. He's the guy dry and right down the middle. Yeah,
he Charles was great, man. He he stuck around for

(01:03:48):
damn near the whole show. You know what's interesting, I
didn't realize Johnny Castle was in the show that much.
Me neither. He's in like every episode, even he's Dunk.
I didn't. I really don't remember that Doug had this
bigger role in the show. But dougs dogs. Doug's got
a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, thank you guys
so much for your questions, and of course, be safe

(01:04:09):
on the on the front lines out there, my friend.
We totally appreciate you. Thank you so much, Thank you
so much. Thank you guys, and thank you Ashley for
calling in with your husband on so we could have
the honor of having some husband or boyfriend that's her husband. Okay, good.
I thought you might have been proposing for him and
he just gotta you get it. If you get a surgeon,

(01:04:32):
man or a woman, you you marry that person. Yeah,
lock it down, lock it down. You're a guy who
got a female surgeon, is it you marry that? Yeah? Yeah,
be well, take care all right. I thought Sarah had
a really nice beat. When Sarah's being overwhelmed for a moment,
we're in the closet, she's so good at turning stuff.

(01:04:55):
She just she's really upset, and then she turns. She
puts on that grave face and it's clean. It's this
little gem and I have no idea of nine to
eleven imprinted on her in some way for that, but
she just turns it and it's she's so nimble. I
forgot how how facile she is emotionally. One of my

(01:05:16):
favorite lines in the show is when she goes, I'd
let him drool on me, and then the way she
looks at Zach after she says it, she meant that ship.
That's funny. Donald. Do you have any memory of the
Fantasy at ten forty seven, which is that post apocalyptic

(01:05:38):
like no, like you're standing by a fire. I remember,
I remember after I saw it. I remembered us doing
that scene, but I was like, where is this going?
I didn't know where it was. It was a basement.
You know What's interesting, I even though this took place
during nine to eleven, there are a lot of moments

(01:05:59):
in the show where I was like, well, I don't remember.
I don't remember this. I don't I don't. You know,
There's there's certain things that I did remember. I remembered
Sean Hayes and him getting choked. I definitely remember the
last scene with UH, with Johnny and UH and Judy
where he kind of slips and professes his love for her.

(01:06:21):
I remembered all of that because that tracked with my story.
But other than that, man, you know, I say this
every week. This show is it's it's so much fun
for me because I don't remember any of it. It's
like I'm watching it with fresh eyes. If you if
you weren't in a scene, or let me say this
about me, if I wasn't in a scene. I wasn't

(01:06:42):
leaving my dressing room to go watch stuff. Right, but
even when the show came on, Right, this is all
brand new for me. But also, Johnny, you weren't smoking
long hits, so you probably have someone you probably have
some of your brain left. Okay. So Donald was like,
I didn't even know the show is about doctors. I

(01:07:04):
was very young. I smoked a lot of marijuana when
I was a kid. Um was that? So? Was that
your first? Correct me if I'm wrong. Was that your
guy's first scene together? That you telling him to beat off? Yeah?
It's it certainly seems like it in the content. I
don't know, but we had to the writing. Yeah. Yeah,
after that, you and I had so many scenes. You know,

(01:07:25):
all of a sudden, I became Gandhi. I don't even
know how that came. Was that an improv from you?
Did you make up Gandhi? Or was okay that's billy Okay?
But yeah, this is this is the beginning of the
Cox and turk Uh your very first encounter you, um,
because we were the two athletes in the hospital, you
know what I mean. And so now it was like,

(01:07:46):
oh okay, so it was like, you know, Michael Jordan
VERSU Kobe Bryant, you know what I mean. That's also
and also he really didn't you know. The whole point
was he didn't like you fucking with Carla in the beginning.
In the beginning, but as time goes on, the beats
that Cox and Turk have is strictly it's all you know,

(01:08:07):
you know this, we have this competitive fire, you know
what I mean, and it needs to be and it
needs to be, you know, way, we need to fan
that bad boy so that you know, we can live.
And so I think Cox and Turk really enjoyed trying
to one up each other. I do too, but I
thought it was a little manufactured because again, if the
camera is an X ray machine and you can see

(01:08:30):
how it was a little man, it always felt a
little manufactured to me, What do you mean? I didn't
believe that I had that big of a problem with you, Okay.
I always looked at it as he didn't like that
I was with Carla, and because I won and got
that one up, he was always trying to get a
one up on Turk. That's how I always looked at it.
But I guess I just I mean, even in a

(01:08:52):
basketball even when we played, even when we played basketball
and you hurt your back in that episode that we
do that, even that you know what I mean? But hey, yeah,
you know. I think also the love that we have
for each other. I remember my first time band like, Johnny,
please don't intimidate me, and You're like, shut the fuck up.
Nobody's intimidating you. And You're right. You are always so generous, though,

(01:09:15):
Johnny with us because you know, we we we we
we knew who you were. We both loved your work,
and I think both I can think I could speak
for both of us when we were like nervous. I
was nervous to work with you, and I just want
to thank you. You know, for those of you who
aren't actors, it's the person who's got more of a
resume and is the bigger star. The onus is always
on them to make everyone else feel comfortable around them.

(01:09:37):
And I thought you always were so generous and never
made us feel intimidated at all, unless it was obviously
in the scene. But as a person, you never did.
I felt like we were gonna that this truly was
even even though Jackie Well respect was number one on
the call sheet. I felt like this thing was the
truest form of an ensemble and that was never lost
on me. And if that a rising tide, there's a say,

(01:10:00):
and the rising tide floats all boats, and I felt
we had to do this together or sink. Either either
rise or sink together. With Billy at the helm, there
was no confusion about that. One time Billy rose, I
had to kiss his wife, who played my wife, so
my ex wife on the show, Christa Miller, who is
a very dear friend of mine, And so I kissed

(01:10:21):
her and in the middle of kissing her, she stuck
her tongue in my mouth and I was just I
was like, I'm not okay with this. And so I
go upstairs to the third floor where our dressing rooms are,
where Billy's office was, and I knocked on his door
and who Billy had took you saying, and he goes, yeah,

(01:10:42):
come on and sit down. I go, I gotta I
gotta get something off my chest here. I was just
in the scene that you wrote. I was just having
a kiss Krista and she stuck her tongue in my
mouth and he's such a bulbuster. He gives it a
pause and he goes, did you like it? He did

(01:11:03):
it to get me yea. By the way, Johnny, this
dovetails into something I said. This dovetails was something I
said earlier. I think Billy has a little bit of
a little bit bit of a thing for that. It
was horrorfying. Not being kissed by CHRISTI was horrorfying. But
the boss's beautiful wife. It makes me nervous even telling

(01:11:25):
the story. That's so funny. I think I think Billy
has a little bit of a special place in his
heart for man he likes kissing his wife. I have
a question for you, guys, when you watched the show now,
do you feel like we foreshadowed so much in every episode?
Like we foreshadowed a lot in every episode, Like even
when watching this episode, it's pretty clear that Sean Hayes's character,

(01:11:49):
he doesn't have it all together, even though he seems
like it. Hey, he has it together, and it's and
maybe because we watched the whole episode now, but every
time Nurse Roberts came in to address him, he always said,
no problem, no problem, and I feel like I feel
like that was foreshadowing. Obviously it was a problem, and
this was going to be the issue that broke him.

(01:12:11):
I feel like, if you watch Scrubs, what we did
very well. We presented the problem to you early on
and disguised it and disguised it or hit it with
comedy and other things. But then at the end of
the episode we always hit you with the drama to
make you feel it. But if you watched all the

(01:12:31):
way through, we would leave crumbs and hints that this
was coming. I think, yes, yes to that, and I
think and it reminded me. I'm reminded of it in
the first flashback where Zachy is with his brother and
the tag out is we don't even talk that much.

(01:12:53):
He doesn't talk that much to me, And then there's
this long I don't know, we'll make it up twenty
your disconnected, And when Tommy Kavanaugh shows up at the hospital,
all that stuff that Zach had, that Billy had insinuated
in that scene yields dividends because they have lost contact.
They're completely disconnected, and the disconnect is profound when they're

(01:13:16):
person to personal. So when Tommy comes in and Jackie
and him, don't connect on any level. Even even the
John Ritter of Jackie's father, they don't connect at all.
And that's all in that first flashback. Yeah, but not
just that, even you missing Jordan the first time we
meet Jordan. At the end of it, you're reminiscing about

(01:13:37):
the wedding and all of that stuff. It tracks later
on because you guys get back together and you do
still love her, even though in between all of that
you guys are warring and you date someone else, and
you know what I mean, Billy, it's very good at
his job. Johnny, did you like this? Did you? Will
you come back again onto the podcast? Yeah? It seems

(01:13:59):
it seems impot to unload the number of stories. Uh,
this was a particularly hard episode when I was watching it.
It was just a hard episode to a lot of
stuff from nine to eleven came back to me, which
I don't know if a lot of people it's a
heavy handed way of approaching something, but people actors are
human beings, and I was really impacted by nine to

(01:14:23):
eleven in a in a immediate family way, and to
have gotten through this episode in retrospect seems impossible to me.
And that is that it's that it's a coherent, well
told tale that goes for twenty one minutes. Is good?
That's good enough? Yeah, yeah, there are there are there
are levels of of good, better, best, excellent episodes, and

(01:14:49):
this one just goes in under the category of executed.
We executed. Yes, there's some funny stuff in it, and
that's good enough. I totally agree, I I I this
is the first one. You know, Donald and I jokes
when we start doing this, like, you know, there's gonna
be ones that we don't like, and we're like, that
feels this is the first one that it's something we
don't like it. It's just that it's like we all
have this Pavlovian response to watching it, going, oh, this

(01:15:10):
just feels wrong and weird, and we remember, I agree,
And I'm not discounting to all the great work that
everybody did. I'd about to say, I feel like everybody
did their jobs so well though, you know what I mean,
at the end of the day, regardless of what we
were going through at the time, if you didn't know
that that was the nine to eleven episode, you're not

(01:15:31):
going to be able to tell you know what I mean.
We know, I don't know that's probably. There's so many
great jokes and we just talked, including that smell was
the fart that I made, right, But we keep her there,
keep her here. I have heard you the five six
sevent eight. Okay, baby baby, baby Wilder come here. We

(01:15:51):
want to thank Johnny c McGinley, the legend and Johnny Um.
We really want you to come back because we're just
sitting around doing this. Man, we got nothing to do.
We're sitting around watching episodes and laughing. Here, yeah, please
come back. There's a thousand times show. And now Donald
has a very special visitor who's going to count us
into the theme song. Don Walder Wilder, my daughter Wilders
here say five six seven eight. Okay, she said, no

(01:16:14):
a five six seven eight stories about show we made
about a bunch of domes and nurses and Janna who here,
I said, he's the stories never should no. So yeado
around you, Here are yadoo around you, Here are free

(01:16:34):
wild show. Mm hmmm