If your life was in danger, there’s no doubt you would want your fate to be in the hands of the brilliant Dr. Cox from “Scrubs.”
The sarcastic yet caring man in the white coat, played by John C. McGinley, was one of the best at what he did and he passed his wisdom to those he trained.
It’s been 15 years since “Scrubs” premiered and we asked McGinley about his time spent inside the hospital — both on and off the screen.
What are some of your most memorable real-life hospital experiences?
“When my son Max was born, we spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at UCLA and that was intense because they thought they were going to have to do a heart procedure on him, but they turned that down and then his heart challenge abated and he was fine. My daughter Kate was a C-section and we were in the neonatal intensive care unit with her and she was fine, so my biggest experiences have been mostly with the nurses. They call it the NICU and the men and women who worked there as nurses were pretty stunning if you asked me.”
Did you take any of this experience into the show?
“Yeah, it’s impossible not to. I always figured in the bottom of the ninth with the bases jacked and two outs you wanted Cox coming in out of the pen because he was the best chance you had at getting out of that hospital in one piece. That would float some of the other eccentricities and gruffness, just the fact that he was most likely the best doctor on staff at Sacred Heart and as a teaching doctor he was the one taking it the most seriously. In other words, he wasn’t teaching these jackasses how to tie their shoes, he was teaching them how to save lives. I thought that bought him a lot of poetic license in teaching with a jackhammer sometimes.
How were you able to get down the dynamic of Cox being a hardass, but still having a heart and caring at the end of the day?
With TV, since there’s no time for anything, everything’s a crunch, it has to be on the page. So what writers can always write given their own experiences are damages. Cox is the biggest collection of damages on the planet. He never became redundant in nine years. So when you present the actor with those pages every week and they never become an exercise in redundancy, you pretty much have to call action and get out of my eye line and I’m good to go.”
What are your thoughts looking back on the show 15 years after it premiered?
“We did the pilot in the winter of 2001 and then the first or second episode was the week of 9/11. My brother was on the 68th floor, he made it out, but I can always mark when ‘Scrubs’ was in direct correlation to when 9/11 was because we got started right when that Tuesday happened. I can always track it backwards. Whenever that anniversary of 9/11 comes around it reminds me of when we started ‘Scrubs.'”
Do people still bring up your role as Dr. Cox? Do they stop you in public and ask you to do Dr. Cox for them?
“It depends where I am. If I’m in New York a lot of the times it’s ‘Wall Street.’ Because I’ve been lucky enough to do a bunch of these things, it’s whatever was on your Netflix last night (laughs).”
What was your favorite part of playing Cox?
“Being in Los Angeles. My son Max had been born right before that and it’s going to sound ridiculous, but it’s really hard to find a gig that shoots in Los Angeles. To be here for nine years, doing the show and being able to come home every night was unheard of. I haven’t had that many gigs in Los Angeles, there’s not that much that happens here unless you’re shooting a live show. I did ‘Point Break’ out here, but I was living down on Perry Street when I did that.”
Do you miss anything about the show or being Dr. Cox?
“I loved playing Dr. Cox. Bill Lawrence, the executive producer of the show, was probably one of the most gifted TV writers of his generation and his work ethic is second to none and that sort of trickles down on the set. When Billy is working that hard everybody else tries to match him, which is impossible, but that becomes contagious, working that heard and being that enthusiastic. Most sets you step on aren’t anywhere close to what the ‘Scrubs’ set was like, everyone was busting their tail.”
What do you think it was about “Scrubs” that made it so special and able to balance both comedy and drama?
“I think it’s all Bill Lawrence, it’s all the guy in charge. When you’re on a set with Oliver Stone it’s Oliver’s set, those are going to be Oliver’s sentiments. When you’re on the set with Bill Lawrence, it’s his puppy. It’s not by committee. Great movies and TV shows don’t happen by committee, they happen by one man or woman driving the thing and in this case it was Bill Lawrence. He’s the one who cast the show, he’s the one who spanked the actors when they were getting out of line, he’s the one who wrote just about every episode even though there was a staff of 14. That was his, all his.”
Were there any insults or lines you liked the most as Dr. Cox?
“I remember getting a script here one night and the word cotillion was in it. I thought it was astonishing I was going to get to say cotillion in front of 14 million people on a Tuesday night and it just struck me as really funny. Of all the words in the lexicon Billy put cotillion in Cox’s mouth and it still strikes me as funny. It was all just to get a rise of out Zach’s character. Cotillion was all at his expense, I can’t remember how I circled back but I remember jamming it down his esophagus.”
If the show was to come back, would you ever reprise the role of Dr. Cox?
“No. I always tell people if you didn’t get it out of your system in 200 episodes what were you waiting for? (laughs). No I think that’s good. Billy wants to do a musical on Broadway so I’ll go see that.”
Would you star in that?
“No that doesn’t play to my strengths. I went to see “Book of Mormon” and Hamilton, there’s a whole other sector that’s one heck of a lot better than me. There’s a group of actors who blew my mind, I can’t do that stuff. I just did Glengarry [GLEN ROSS]and that was the most exciting thing I ever done. While we were doing Glengarry I went to see “Book of Mormon” and I couldn’t believe what those guys were doing. They were all playing seven different characters and I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. And they had to do it eight times a week, I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they didn’t get hurt or shred their vocal instruments. It was like a magic trick to me, I couldn’t believe my eyes the same with Hamilton.”
