Movies - TV
Bill Lawrence Had To Rein In Sarah Chalke's Scrubs Performance
By MATT RAINIS
As a hospital comedy, "Scrubs" had to be very intentionally goofy, and one way the show let out its sillier side was the many cutaway sequences, which often showed a flashback or a daydream of one of the characters. At times, however, the absolute insanity of the cutaways went too far for creator Bill Lawrence, and in a 2018 interview, he and Sarah Chalke talked about how he had to tone down her performance in one specific cutaway.
In the scene, Chalke explained how she went a bit too far with her creative costume design, stating, “I was supposed to be a nerd in headgear and lots of zits, and we kind of just were having fun with it, [...] Bill was like, 'What is on your lip?' I'm like, 'It's a cornflake. It's supposed to be a cold sore.' He's like, 'No. Lose the cornflake. That's too far.'"
"You shouldn't have to say 'lose the cold sore' to somebody," Lawrence quipped, in the same interview. Even with the show's penchant for spiraling into weirdness, Lawrence remains proud of their ability to balance the serious and the silly. And sometimes maintaining that balance is as simple as omitting a cornflake.