Bill Lawrence on His Emmy Contenders ‘Shrinking’ and ‘Rooster,’ the Rollerocaster Journey of ‘Scrubs’ and Being Fired from ‘Friends’

Bill Lawrence, our guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which was recorded at the recent Napa Valley StreamFest, is a veteran television producer, writer and director who created or co-created several of the most beloved TV shows of the past 30 years, including Spin City, Scrubs, Ted Lasso and two that are currently serious Emmy contenders, Shrinking and Rooster.

The 57-year-old, who was the 2025 recipient of the Writers Guild of America-East’s Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence, and has to his name seven Emmy nominations — including six for best comedy series, spread between three shows, Scrubs, Ted Lasso and Shrinking — two of which he won, has been described by the New York Times as “one of TV’s most successful creators,” by The Ankler as “one of television’s hottest showrunners” and by FandomWire as “the maestro of the modern television comedy.”

In addition to Shrinking and Rooster, Lawrence has two other TV shows that are currently active: a reboot of Scrubs, the first season of which rolled out on ABC between February and April; Apple TV’s Ted Lasso, the fourth season of which will drop in August; and Apple TV’s Bad Monkey, the second season of which is forthcoming.

You can listen to the full conversation via the audio player above or read excerpts of it — lightly edited for clarity and/or brevity — below.

On the high school teacher who changed his life and after whom he named Dr. Cox from Scrubs…

“It makes me emotional. I grew up on the East Coast. I didn’t know anybody in Hollywood. I love sports, and I was mostly concerned as a kid with what teams I could make and play on. Bob Cox was my first mentor. He was the head of the English Department at Ridgefield Public High School where I went. Me and a buddy of mine used to sneak out at lunch and do stupid things, like drink beers and smoke stuff. And he [Cox] was like, ‘Why don’t you spend your lunch hour shooting the shit with me about whatever you’re reading, whatever movies you’re seeing?’ He convinced me that I could maybe be a writer. He told me at a young age that I was very good at writing dialogue. He passed away in the last two years. But I named Dr. Cox in Scrubs after him. He definitely changed my life.”

On being fired, in his early twenties, from the writing staffs of Boy Meets World, The Nanny and Friends…

“I got fired off three gigs in a row. Each one was for a different valid reason. I was a cool comedy kid in my head — I was still going out to The Comedy Store and seeing standups and trying to do standup sometimes — and I wrote on a show that I thought was beneath me, which is so insulting and disrespectful. When I got let go, the person that created and ran the show said, ‘Anything that finds an audience has merit.’ Just so you know, the show I was shitting on in my head was Boy Meets World. I wrote on the first year of Boy Meets World, and it’s so embarrassing to tell that story now because so many people that are my contemporaries and friends are like, ‘Oh, that show was such a seminal show for me as a writer, and I loved it so much.’ Man, that was a super painful and powerful lesson. Then I got fired off The Nanny, which was also cool because [sarcastically] that show didn’t work either. And then the best firing I had was, I was a writer on the first season of Friends. I deservedly got fired off of that show. A huge part of television writing, comedy writing, is getting along with everybody. I didn’t do it that well. But the best thing that happened to me when I got fired up that show was David Crane, who created it and ran it along with Marta Kauffman and Kevin Bright, called and recommended me to Gary Goldberg [with whom Lawrence would co-created Spin City].”

On three-season shows…

“Shrinking was pitched as a three-season story… What really excited me about streaming was every time I pitched a streaming show, I pitched the world, the characters and, because I wanted to tell a whole story, I’d go, ‘Here’s the beginning, middle and end.’ And they’d say, ‘But what if the beginning, middle and end happened, and people still want to watch the show?’ And I was like, ‘Well, if the characters are that good and rich, we’ll come up with another story.’ Ted Lasso is a great example. I didn’t work on the show the third year [in order to focus on Shrinking], but Jason [Sudeikis] stayed very true to what we pitched as the beginning, middle and end of that show. And people will see, when the new Ted Lasso comes on later this year, that it is Ted Lasso, but it’s a completely different story. There’s no way that people could even mix it up. Shrinking, we’re going to keep it going because who wouldn’t want to keep working on it?”

On why Shrinking is only possible in the streaming era…

“If I had tried to pitch this in Spin City days, if I had gone in like, ‘Hey, I want to do a comedy, and it’s about this dude that’s wife died, she got run over by a drunk driver, and he’s being an awful father, and he’s hanging out with sex workers, and he’s doing a lot of narcotics, and he’s just a horrible person,’ they’d have been like, ‘Dude, you have to go!’ That’s part of the fun of it.”

On his newest show, Rooster…

“The dirty secret is Steve Carell is playing Carl Hiaasen, who wrote Bad Monkey… he’s the sweetest guy, still trying to kind of find his place and his bearings, uncomfortable in his skin, but lovely and funny. We took that and combined it with the fact that Steve, [Rooster co-creator] Matt Tarses and I all have adult daughters, all the same age, all who understandably don’t want us in their lives anymore at the level that we want to be in their lives, and that’s where the show came from.”