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'Scrubs' Episodes May Return To Hulu With Blackface Episodes Edited Out

Updated August 16, 2021

When it comes to education about Black Lives Matter movement, Hollywood is learning about their problematic actions of the past.

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The latest show to be called out for the offensive use of blackface is Scrubs.

The medical comedy-drama show starring Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke aired from 2001-2010.

While it has a cult following, a few episodes have been called out for the use of blackface.

The three episodes include, "My Fifteen Seconds" (season 3, episode 7), "My Jiggly Ball" (season 5, episode 4) and "My Chopped Liver" (season 5, episode 17).

One of the episodes featured Zach Braff's character in blackface at a party, while another included Sarah Chalke’s character in blackface during one of the show’s fantasy sequences.

Eeeep.

On Monday, it was reported that the missing Scrubs episodes will likely return to Hulu in an edited form.

IMDb

TV Line reported that Bill Lawrence revealed the news of the edits while chatting on the podcast "Fake Doctors, Real Friends" with Scrubs stars Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke.

“The reason why that word ‘showrunner’ exists in television is because you’re the gatekeeper, and anything that gets allowed on a show you ultimately have to take responsibility for,” Bill explained.

"So, first off, super sorry that any of you guys had to deal with any stuff because… even though we’re all friends and it was a super creative and reciprocal environment, you guys still, at the end of the day, did and were receptive to doing whatever stuff we told you [to do]."

"It starts with ignorance. We almost thought that we had… a free pass to not have those thoughts [about the history of blackface] back then because we were so f**king proud of ourselves for doing a very diverse show, in front of and behind the camera. [We had a] great black-and-white friendship that exists as a real black-and-white friendship, a great interracial couple… It was almost a block of arrogance where we were like, ‘We’re so good at what we’re portraying and doing and showing that we could never venture into muddy waters.’ And even now, with that same ignorance, we never really connected the two of those things until now. You do the reading, and it’s not any different."

Bill then revealed he may reedit the episodes in order to bring them back to Hulu.

"Twitter is like, ‘Why did you pull the whole episodes?’ Why didn’t you just edit those moments out and put them back on?’ And I said to one person, ‘It’s a pandemic. I don’t really have an editing facility up right now.’ I’ll probably do that, but the first thing I wanted to do was get them off TV because it bummed me out personally,” he said. “It just made me feel [expletive]."

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