‘Scrubs’ Star Ava Bunn on Shaping ‘Dr. Selfie’ for the Reboot and Matt Rife’s Toxic Masculinity Guest Role
“Scrubs” breakout star Ava Bunn ushers the reboot into the digital age as Sacred Heart’s resident TikTok doc.
The 25-year-old actress told TheWrap that leaning into Gen Z slang and mannerisms was tricky because the internet moves so quickly. Even though the reboot filmed in November, Bunn wondered if some elements of Dr. Sam Tosh would still resonate.
“Something that’s really tough about Gen Z slang is you never know how fast it’s going to leave the trend cycle,” Bunn told TheWrap. “Some of them, we’d be like, ‘Okay, we’ll wait to see if that’s still [a thing].’”
Dr. Tosh worked closely with Dr. Elliot Reid (Sarah Chalke) in Wednesday’s episode to help diagnose a hospitalized wellness influencer, played by comedian Matt Rife.
Logan (Rife) and Tosh (Bunn) bond quickly over their internet fame. However, Elliot sees Tosh’s attempts to connect with the patient as immature and unprofessional, referring to her as “Dr. Selfie.”
After some initial diagnostics, the docs discover that Logan’s TikTok diet has given him one of the oldest diseases in the book – scurvy. Though the illness has a simple fix, Logan refuses to eat fruit to keep up his low BMI for his followers.
Bunn told TheWrap that Rife seemed like a natural choice for the “ripped comedian” guest spot and said that the two clicked on-set and were able to bounce back and forth off of each other.
“It was cool to have a fellow comedian in the house and doing scenes with him, and we both improvised a lot,” the Just For Laughs New Faces comedian said. “He had some jokes that literally made me break. He’s very creative.”
The first-time series regular warmed up to improvising on set as the season progressed. As her comfort with the character and the cast grew, she was able to try something new on a take or implement her own flair on a piece of dialogue. (“Scrubs” star and director Zach Braff even joked to TheWrap that Bunn taught the OGs how to “clock it.”)
“Something that was cool to learn from the OGs is that you have to get the takes of it written, but then you can throw in takes where you say whatever you want,” she explained of improvisation on the comedy set. “No one’s really coming up to you and going, ‘Okay, this is the take where you do whatever.’ You just gotta be really brave and go for it.”
Bunn collaborated with the writing staff on the series to bring authenticity to her Gen Z character by implementing nonchalant Gen Z ticks. She relied less on slang and more on tone of voice and mannerisms.
Each of the “Scrubs” characters have to balance the life or death stakes of medicine, while bringing a levity to the workplace comedy. Bunn said that the newbies take the tone from the OGs, Braff, Chalke and Donald Faison.
Tosh often has to code-switch from gossiping with fellow interns about PR samples to diagnosing patients with serious medical issues like an eating disorder.
Bunn revealed that the cast all watched a cut of the pilot before shooting episode four. She shared that the screening was particularly informative for the tone of the half-hour comedy moving forward.
“Getting to watch it and see how we fit into the world, we learned a lot about how fast [the pace] is,” Bunn said.
Joining the “Scrubs” universe came with its reservations, most of all, Bunn said, was winning over the die-hard fans. One “ah-ha moment” for the actress was realizing that the interns are reflections of their mentor counterparts.
“It took the pressure off of us,” Bunn said. “They’ve got it, and we just got to kind of follow along and be here with them, [Braff, Chalke and Faison], which reflects also in our characters, of us literally being mentored by them.”
The first four episodes of “Scrubs” will be available to stream on Hulu Thursday with new episodes airing on ABC on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.
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