Zach Braff Finds ‘Freedom’ in Turning 50

What was it like for you to turn 50? Did you embrace it? Did you fear it?

Honestly, it’s the happiest I’ve ever been. I always feel like Molly Shannon’s Sally O’Malley character when she says, ‘I’m 50 years old!’ It gave me the freedom to start making bolder choices about how I want the rest of my life to be. I had some epiphanies when I turned 50. I didn’t even know they were coming, but I find myself all the time being like, I don’t know if this happened for other of your readers, but being like, ‘You know what? I’m 50 f---ing years old. I’m not dealing with that anymore. No more. If you’re that type of person, you’re gone. I’m 50 years old. I’m not going to do X, Y, and Z anymore.’ It gave me sort of permission to, in my own head, to sort of shut some mishigas out of my life.

What’s the negative part of getting older for you?

I don’t really love the wrinkles under my eyes. I don’t love my wrinkles, but I’m getting used to them. I don’t love that my beard is completely white. I wish I had a little more pepper in it. But no, there’s no doubt, I’m so happy. I’m so fulfilled with work. And I have a great family, and I have a dog that is my pride and joy.

Braff directs Harrison Ford in the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking.” "He's a big softy once you get past the gruffness," Braff says of the Hollywood legend.

Courtesy of Apple

You’ve also been busy directing. Will you do any more Shrinking episodes?

In this season [the third, which began streaming Jan. 28], I directed episodes 3 and 4. And I’ve been directing for the new Steve Carell show called Rooster that comes out in March. I directed episodes 3 and 4 of that one as well.

How was it to direct Harrison Ford? That must have been quite a trip.

It was. He’s a big softy once you get past the gruffness. It’s very intimidating. But I had some, speaking of AARP, experience dealing with gruff seniors because I directed a movie for your audience called Going in Style, about three seniors that rob a bank. I was directing Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. And then I directed Morgan again in my own film, A Good Person. But Harrison takes the cake, and he’s a sweetheart, and we found common ground — he liked my style of directing, and I’m a pilot. I’m not a pilot like on his level, but I have my pilot’s license, and so we talk aviation.

I saw an old interview where you were turning 30 and you talked about how you’d just taken your first flying lesson. It was on a bucket list of yours. Now that you’re 50, what’s still on the list?

I’d like to get back into flying, to be honest. I let it go because I got busy with life and it’s expensive and I was just focused on other things. But I find myself watching YouTube videos of guys flying the plane I used to have, and just living vicariously through YouTube guys.

Braff and Chalke in Season 9 of “Scrubs” in 2009. Both of their characters will again walk the halls of the fictional Sacred Heart Hospital in the series revival.

Richard Carwright/ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection

What do you like about flying?

It requires every single aspect of your brain. It’s bizarrely meditative because there’s no room for you to have too much chatter going on in your head because you have to be constantly scanning your instruments and communicating and flying the airplane. It takes a lot of skill and you’re so focused on it that your mind is kind of quiet. It also feels like such an achievement to be flying an airplane; it just feels cool. Also, I love learning. I loved taking on something that I never thought I would be able to do. I miss it. So that might be something I get back into in my 50s.

Is there anything else you’d like to take on in your 50s?

Flying is the first thing that comes to mind. That’s the big thing. It remains to be seen whether I’ll get married and have kids. That’s on the TBD list. I might just be a dog owner.

What about writing another movie?

My whole life, I’d like to continue making movies. I’m sure that the next one will definitely reflect being in my 50s.

Braff and Natalie Portman in 2004's “Garden State.” Braff also wrote and directed the cult-classic film.

Mary Evans/Miramax Films/Ronald Grant/Courtesy Everett Collection

Garden State, which you wrote, directed and starred in, continues to resonate. It was a love letter to your home state. After so much time on the West Coast, do you still consider yourself a Jersey boy?

I do. I don’t spend any time in Jersey, except when I shot A Good Person a few years ago [the movie was filmed entirely in the state, including South Orange and Maplewood, where Braff was born and grew up]. But I have family there, and I feel like that’s inside of me. I feel like there’s a ‘Jersey-ness’ that if you grew up there, you always feel your whole life.

I did and I do! Central Jersey, Marlboro. And that’s why I’m asking.

There you go. You know.

Who inspired you when you first got started?

Well, it’s controversial to say, but it’s the truth: Woody Allen was a very big influence on my parents. He was their favorite filmmaker, and I watched all of his movies, and that’s where the sort of notion that you could be an actor, writer, director was planted in my head. 

I grew up as an East Coast Jewish guy, and there were just Neil Simon and Mel Brooks, and that style of comedy was my father’s favorite, and that’s what I grew up on. My father loved the theater, and he would bring us to see lots of plays and musicals, and so the theater, seeing Broadway, was really my first real inspiration, seeing all those musicals of the ’80s. And Neil Simon’s plays of the ’80s. That’s what I was raised on.

Filmmakers can get boxed in. Is there a type of movie that you haven’t tried that you’d like to make? Another genre?

Yeah. I would like to do something ‘period.’ I’m really drawn to period films. A period romantic film. I like romantic movies. Like Out of Africa or the movie Atonement, something that’s sort of big in scale and period and romantic. I’d be drawn to do something like that.

The "Scrubs" revival reunites real-life best friends Braff and Donald Faison. "Every time we’re together, it’s always been a daydream," Braff says.

Jeff Weddell/Disney

What do Scrubs fans tell you after all these years since the show first ended?

They tell me that they were raised on it, their parents loved it, they loved it, they can’t wait to show it to their kids. For so many people in the medical profession, this was their real touchstone. We had doctors visiting the set the other day; a visiting pediatric cardiac surgeon was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is my favorite show of all time.’ People write me that it’s the reason they went into medicine, the reason they became a nurse, the reason they became a paramedic, the reason they wanted to help people.