Scrubs stars Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke know the stakes are high for Season 2

Judy Reyes, left, Donald Faison, Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke in Scrubs. Disney

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Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke knew the stakes were high when they set about reviving the hit TV sitcom Scrubs a decade and a half after it went off the air.

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“We wanted to deliver for the fans,” said the show’s star Braff (J.D.) who along with co-stars Faison (Turk) and Chalke (Elliot) took time out from shooting season 2 of the revival to speak with Postmedia. “The fans have such a connection to the original show, and we were all terrified that we wouldn’t, you know, nail it.”

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By all accounts the new series, which airs on ABC and streams on Hulu, satisfied fans as the show, which first ran from 2001-2010, came back this past February and, according to Disney, was one of its most streamed comedies.

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“The reaction was so lovely, beyond anything we could have dreamt. So now we just want to keep that going, and we work so hard,” said Braff, who directed the season 1 revival pilot and who, along with Faison and Chalke, is an executive producer on the show. “We all give it everything we have. I barely sleep because I’m always thinking about how we can make it better. And so, yeah, I think there’s a lot more pressure now for us.”

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Faison, whose character is now married to head nurse Carla (Judy Reyes) and has a house full of daughters, says, like Braff, he felt the game was upped even further heading into season 2 of the revival that began shooting in Vancouver in July.

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“There’s more stress now to put out something good. You want the second one to be The Empire Strikes Back. You know what I mean?” said Faison. “You want the second one to be better than the first one … that’s a lot of stress, and it’s a lot of pressure. Luckily, we have great leaders involved with this because you can second guess yourself right out of confidence.”

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When the second revival series premières Sept. 30, the gang at Sacred Heart Hospital will continue to face new challenges in their roles as department heads overseeing a bunch of interns and, of course, there will still be many bumps in their highly intertwined personal lives.

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“I have to say that goes to Aseem Batra, who’s our showrunner and head writer. She and the team of writers did a lot of research with doctors and interviewing doctors in all different forms of the profession, and talking about the issues,” said Braff. “The insurance aspects, the concierge doctor aspects, all of these different ways into the conversation, and they’re making sure that we tell those stories.

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“Scrubs is first and foremost a comedy, but we want to make sure that we’re not ignoring really relevant conversations about health care in the United States,” added Braff.

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In the past, the series received support from many in the medical community who said the show was accurate in its depiction of the emotional weight of the job, the exhaustion, and the relationships between interns and doctors.