'Scrubs' Star Confirms How the Revival Fixed One of the OG Show's Biggest Problems

Published Oct 3, 2026, 9:01 AM EDT

Greer Riddell is a London-based culture journalist and critic writing on film, television, audience behaviour, and the wider media industry. She is a Writer and Social Media Coordinator at Collider and TV Editor at FILMHOUNDS.

Her recent collaborations include Netflix, Warner Bros., DC Studios, Hulu, and Disney+, producing features on titles including Saturday Night Live UK, Severance, Sitcoms, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Stranger Things. Her recent reviews include Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85’, Scrubs Season 10, and The Boroughs. Her work has also included coverage of UK film festivals and features published in Film Stories Magazine.

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When Season 1 of the Scrubs revival debuted this April, it arrived 16 years after the original series had attempted to introduce a brand-new generation of doctors. Season 9's ill-fated attempt probed that the transition came too quickly. Swapping out the established leads felt jarring, while the main trio of doctors was still too close to their own training to have the years of experience needed to be effective mentors. The Scrubs revival has now put that awkward chapter to bed. Season 1 introduced a new group of doctors ready to make their own mistakes under the watchful eyes of J.D. (Zach Braff), Turk (Donald Faison), and Elliot (Sarah Chalke), creating a new team at Sacred Heart without losing the dynamic that made the original series work.

One of the most exciting additions is Dr. Sam Tosh, played by newcomer Ava Bunn. Tosh had a difficult relationship with Elliot throughout Season 1, particularly over her reliance on social media and technology when treating patients, and she also began a romance with Dr. Asher Green (Jacob Dudman). In Season 2, Bunn is the only member of the new cast to be promoted to a series regular, which means there's a lot more to come for this character. Collider sat down with Bunn ahead of the new season to find out what is in store for Tosh and how it feels to become a part of such an enduring sitcom.

Tosh and Elliot Are Headed Toward a New Type of Mentor-Mentee Relationship in ‘Scrubs’ Season 2

Image via. ABC/Hulu

As Season 2 begins, Bunn has two major responsibilities as Dr. Tosh. The first is leading one of the central mentor-mentee relationships that Scrubs has always used to explore the pressures of becoming a doctor. The original series began with the frosty relationship between Doctor Perry Cox (John C. McGinley) and J.D., which evolved from outright dislike into something close to family. That relationship has continued to define the series, particularly after Season 1 of the revival placed Cox in the vulnerable position of needing J.D.'s help following his autoimmune disease diagnosis. Mentor-mentee relationships, alongside the process of learning how to treat patients as a team, have remained some of the strongest throughlines in Scrubs. They are also central to the show's ability to connect its medical stories with the personal struggles of its characters. Bunn understands the significance of stepping into that tradition. “I feel very lucky and honored to be doing that,” she says, explaining that she took inspiration from “J.D. and Elliot, everyone in the OG cast,” while hoping she was “living up to the Scrubs standard.”

Dr. Tosh and Elliot had their own fractious mentor-mentee relationship in Season 1. Elliot considered Tosh's use of social media and reliance on technology to be unprofessional, earning the young doctor the nickname “Doctor Selfie.” Tosh took the criticism hard enough to consider quitting before Elliot recognized how much Dr. Cox's own harsh mentorship affected her. Elliot became a formidable doctor, but this version of her lacked empathy. J.D. made her realize that she did not want to put Tosh through the same experience that Cox did for her, suggesting that Season 2 will see the pair begin repairing their teacher-student relationship.

Ava Bunn on Tosh's Burgeoning Romance With Asher in the Hulu Revival

Image via Disney

There is another parallel between Tosh and the original doctors: her romantic storyline. Dr. Tosh is at the center of one of the revival's principal romances outside the original trio. In the Season 1 finale, “My Celebration,” the team heads out for drinks — yes, Appletinis — and Tosh kisses Dr. Asher Green. With the show's original romances setting a particularly high bar, Bunn has been doing her homework. She watched “Scrubs romance compilations” online to help “get a gauge for the tone all the way through, because we are riding such a fine line of goofy drama, genuine comedy, and being a real human.” As she tells Collider, it has been an “interesting tone to try to navigate.”

Joining Scrubs as a "newbie" comes with an obvious point of comparison. The original show's ninth and final season remains infamous, with its new generation of interns failing to connect with longtime viewers. Returning to the same premise for the revival could have been daunting, but Bunn sees one major difference this time around. “I feel like we got so lucky, we all naturally have such good chemistry,” she says. Bunn explains that the cast bonded quickly on set, something she believes has carried through into their performances, “I've always just felt so strongly about my fellow interns, and I feel like we're a unit and a force to be reckoned with.”

For Season 2, Bunn is particularly excited to show a different side of Tosh. She hopes the character can become “more vulnerable with Asher and [have] those sweet, tender moments,” giving audiences the chance to see her beyond the confident, TikTok-obsessed exterior. “It's been really fun as an actor exploring those different sides,” says Bunn.

Ava Bunn Is Ready To Bring Her Improvisation Skills To Scrubs’ Sacred Heart

The 16-year gap between the original Scrubs and its revival has also given the series plenty of new material to explore. Medicine and technology have changed considerably since J.D., Turk, and Elliot first walked into Sacred Heart, creating an obvious generational divide between the original doctors and their younger colleagues. Nobody embodies that divide quite like Dr. Tosh. As Sacred Heart's resident Doctor Selfie, Tosh's relationship with social media has become one of the defining elements of her character. Bunn even turned to TikTok to prepare for the role, watching real doctors online and observing how they present themselves on social media. “Now my entire For You page, it's all doctors, nurses, surgeons that are, like, making TikTok dances before they go in for a surgery,” she says. For Bunn, social media became an unexpected research tool. She watched medical professionals give advice while participating in whatever trend happened to be popular, jokingly describing it as “really hard and insane research.”

Those TikTok trends have already found their way into the revival. The Season 1 finale featured a particularly memorable end tag in which J.D. and Doctor Cox's emotional vulnerability was followed by Bunn lip-syncing to one of Cox's famous rants. “I just feel like any of Cox's monologues would be such a good TikTok audio!” Bunn says.

Tosh's enthusiasm for TikTok dances and lip-sync trends aligns naturally with Bunn's own background in live performance. Although she is relatively new to television, she has extensive experience performing live with The Groundlings and the Upright Citizens Brigade, where she performs solo characters and hosts the popular live show, Late Bloomers. Bunn is therefore no stranger to improvisation or throwing herself into physical comedy: “It was so fun to bring just, like, a sense of play. You know, I am super open to anything.”

That experience is particularly useful in Scrubs, a series that has always been comfortable moving between heartfelt medical drama, physical comedy, and surreal fantasies. Bunn says the show's openness to improvisation has allowed her to combine what she already knows with what she is learning on set. “That's what I love about Scrubs too, is they're so open to riffing and improv and, you know, physical comedy, and that's, like, my bread and butter. So it's very fun to meld those two worlds and learn from both of them.” The influence works both ways. Bunn has even taken lessons from the Scrubs set back into her live performances. “I've learned stuff on Scrubs that I've taken into my live show world. I've learned so much from both worlds.”

There is still plenty of room for Bunn to put her own stamp on the dialogue, too. During a scene with David Gridley, who plays Dr. Blake Lewis, another intern working under J.D., Bunn added her own improvised lines to the exchange. “I'm, like, birthday cake for the big boy, like stuff like that, and, like, pizza pizza... A lot of that was improvised,” she says. Her favorite additions, however, may be the smaller details. Bunn enjoys incorporating the specific mannerisms of Gen Z into Tosh's dialogue, creating another subtle distinction between the original doctors and the generation now learning from them. “If you hear me adding in, like, Gen Z, like how people in our generation don't just say yes or no, they'll say, ‘No, yeah, no’ instead... I add in a lot of those little things here and there.”

For a show built around the clash between Sacred Heart's old guard and a new generation of doctors, those small details matter. Bunn's improvisation background allows Tosh to feel distinctly of her generation without making her feel out of place in the world of Scrubs. As Season 2 gives Dr. Tosh more room to explore her relationships, her insecurities, and her life beyond the hospital, Bunn's willingness to experiment could make her one of the revival's most exciting new additions. There’s a reason she was promoted to a regular cast member, after all.

The two-episode premiere of the Scrubs revival airs Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 8:00 p.m. EDT/PDT on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

Cast

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  John 'J.D.' Dorian

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  Donald Faison

  Christopher Turk

Scrubs revisits the dynamic duo of JD and Turk as they reunite at Sacred Heart Hospital. Amidst the evolving landscape of medicine and changing interns, they navigate challenges with their enduring friendship.