Another member of the Sacred Heart Hospital staff will be on call for ABC’s Scrubs revival.
Judy Reyes has signed on to the show to reprise her role as Carla Espinosa, Sacred Heart’s head nurse and Dr. Chris Turk’s (Donald Faison) wife. She’ll recur on Scrubs and be billed as a special guest star while continuing her series regular role on another ABC series, High Potential.
Reyes joins Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and and Faison in the revival, which ABC formally picked up in July after several months of development. It’s set for a midseason premiere in 2025-26.
Reyes was a regular on eight of Scrubs’ nine seasons on NBC and ABC; she didn’t appear in the final, medical school-set ABC season. The show explained her absence at the time by saying she left her hospital post after giving birth to her and Turk’s second child.
After several years of the Scrubs cast and creator Bill Lawrence discussing a revival, the show went into development in late 2024. Braff signed on to reprise his role of Dr. John “JD” Dorian in May, and Chalke and Faison joined as ABC announced the series order.
The revival’s logline reads, “JD and Turk scrub in together for the first time in a long time. Medicine has changed, interns have changed, but their bromance has stood the test of time. Characters new and old navigate the waters of Sacred Heart with laughter, heart and some surprises along the way.”
Disney’s 20th Television is producing the Scrubs revival. Tim Hobert and Aseem Batra, writers and producers (and in Batra’s case, an occasional guest star) on the original series, will serve as showrunners. They executive produce with Lawrence — who negotiated a carve-out in his overall deal at Warner Bros. TV to be an EP on the show — Braff, Chalke, Faison, and Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer of Lawrence’s Doozer Productions.
Reyes plays Lt. Selena Soto on High Potential, ABC’s top-rated series last season. Her credits also include Claws, Netflix and Pop’s One Day at a Time, Jane the Virgin and Devious Maids. She is repped by Buchwald, ATA Management and Franklin Weinrib.
Deadline first reported the news.
