Tucked into a corner of the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Burbank is the modest home of Doozer Productions. There are few signs it is one of Hollywood’s most prolific TV factories.
On a late January afternoon there were no Emmys in sight, no posters or props from “Scrubs,” “Shrinking,” “Ted Lasso” or the other dozen or so shows it has produced. Just empty walls, some scattered furniture, a few employees and, on a couch, Bill Lawrence, the head of the whole thing. “They turned our old offices into a parking lot, so this one’s still kind of new,” he explained.
“It’s not that new,” he clarified. “We’ve just been busy.”
It’s true: Nearly 30 years after he oversaw his first TV show, the political sitcom “Spin City,” Lawrence is in the midst of a career renaissance, the executive producer of five current series. (This week Netflix announced yet another one: “I Suck at Girls,” based on the book by Justin Halpern, will begin filming later this year.)
We met at his production office because that morning he had been writing scenes for “Bad Monkey,” his comic crime drama, adapted from Carl Hiaasen novels, starring Vince Vaughn. That afternoon would bring edits for “Rooster,” his new Steve Carell comedy premiering Sunday on HBO. Then it’s off to visit to the writers’ room for the Apple TV griefcom “Shrinking.”
The hospital sitcom “Scrubs,” still perhaps his most famous creation, was about to return to ABC. “Ted Lasso,” the feel-good soccer hit that kicked off this run of success at a moment when Lawrence had started to wonder if the business had passed him by, will be back this summer.
So … lots to talk about. But he wasn’t ready to get into any of it yet. “How’ve you been, man?” he asked. “How’s all the [expletive] that matters? How’s your life?”
It was a friendly way into a conversation, sure, but it was also a glimpse of an attitude and an ethos. Lawrence has become one of TV’s most successful creators by making funny series that are at least as concerned with the stuff that matters as with landing punchlines. His shows are infused with often silly humor but also real heart and a clear curiosity about people and their impulses, about how they can simultaneously be saviors to others and their own worst enemies.
“Shrinking,” now in its third season, tracks a therapist and single father trying to rebound from his wife’s death as his beloved mentor deals with Parkinson’s. The initial run of “Ted Lasso” follows a coach fleeing a failing marriage who tries to heal and be healed by other damaged people.
“Rooster,” which stars Carell as a best-selling author lecturing at the same small college where his professor daughter’s marriage is publicly imploding, is about a father’s efforts to stay in his adult child’s life. But funny.
“The Bill recipe is, not only is it going to make you laugh, it’s going to tap into something in your own life,” said Zach Braff, the star of “Scrubs” and a longtime collaborator.
Michael J. Fox, who has worked with Lawrence off and on since starring in “Spin City,” said, “Billy loves to explore people’s inner gearboxes. He loves to figure out what makes people work.”
Lawrence’s shows often focus on mentorship — think of the dynamic between John C. McGinley and Braff in “Scrubs,” or Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in “Shrinking” — and so does he. Aseem Batra, the showrunner of the new “Scrubs,” got her start as a writer on the show a decade ago. (She also played Josephine, the squeaky-voiced intern.) Lawrence has hired Braff to direct episodes on numerous shows. He cast Brett Goldstein in a pilot that went nowhere, then brought him onto “Ted Lasso” and then created “Shrinking” with him and Segel.
After three decades in the business Lawrence has created an expansive family tree of trusted collaborators that allows him to be as productive as he is right now.
“There’s a huge number of people whose lives he has completely changed,” Goldstein said. “He’s got 25 shows; he could be a [expletive]. But he’s lovely to everyone.”
At 57, Lawrence is tall and still boyishly handsome. “You have to include that he has electric blue eyes,” said his wife and frequent collaborator, Christa Miller. (Noted.) Miller has starred in and been a music supervisor for many of her husband’s shows, and she said they have managed to maintain a mostly normal home life along the way. They have been married for 26 years and have three children: Henry, Will and Charlotte, a burgeoning pop star. (OK, somewhat normal.).
Though easygoing in conversation, Lawrence has a certain fine-featured patrician quality; he looks more likely to saunter across a yacht deck than a soundstage. And that’s even before you consider his given name: William Van Duzer Lawrence IV. (His company name was inspired by his middle one.)
Lawrence is the namesake of his great-great-grandfather, a New York mogul and developer who also founded Sarah Lawrence College, named for his wife. Lawrence’s mother comes from a family of fishing guides in Central Florida. (His parents met in college.)
That familial dichotomy supplies the ingredients of the Bill Lawrence recipe. “The WASP-y side joked and acerbically laughed their way through tough times,” he said. The Florida fishermen were natural storytellers.
Growing up in Ridgefield, Conn., Lawrence was obsessed with comedy. He credits his own mentors with helping him turn it into a career. A high school English teacher named Bob Cox told him he could write — McGinley’s Dr. Cox on “Scrubs” is named for him — and after college, a family friend helped Lawrence get in touch with the Hollywood talent managers George Shapiro and Howard West.
Lawrence convinced them to take him on as a client, and he soon had his first writing job. Within a few years he was hired and fired from “Friends” — “the most massive body blow I got in the television business,” he said — and met the most pivotal mentor of his career.
Gary Goldberg, the creator of “Family Ties” who helped turn Michael J. Fox into a star, hired Lawrence for a sitcom that didn’t work out. A few months later Goldberg asked him to cocreate a new series for Fox — the actor had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s but hadn’t announced it publicly, and he wanted to lead one last show while he still could.
“Spin City,” starring Fox as a sharp deputy to an incompetent New York City mayor, debuted on ABC in September 1996 and was a solid hit. When a temporary rift with Fox spurred Goldberg to leave during the second season, Lawrence, at 28, became the showrunner. “The only freaky thing about that was being dialed in at a young age on what Mike was dealing with,” he said.
Fox remembers Lawrence then as “a kid” who was occasionally nervous about his new responsibilities but funny and fundamentally confident. “Immediately I knew that he would not only be great on our show, he’d have a long career,” he said.
Fox and Lawrence left “Spin City” in 2000. A few years later Lawrence cast Fox in a story line on “Scrubs,” inaugurating a new phase of his career playing characters with disabilities on shows like “Rescue Me,” “The Good Wife” and, currently, “Shrinking.”
“Billy showed me how to do that,” he said.
“Scrubs” premiered on NBC in 2001. With its single-camera aesthetic and blend of shenanigans and serious health crises, it was a kind of zany fun house reflection of “M*A*S*H*,” Lawrence’s favorite show. It had a strong eight-season run — almost everyone involved disavows the ninth — that solidified Lawrence’s reputation as a bankable creator.
The decade that followed, however, was more hit and miss. “Cougar Town,” a wine-soaked paean to adult friendship, lasted six seasons. Several others (“Ground Floor,” “Life Sentence”) came and went. When “Whiskey Cavalier,” an ABC action-comedy Lawrence executive produced and really liked, was canceled after one season in 2019, it was “a gut punch,” he said. “That was the only time I thought, maybe I don’t know what people are into anymore.”
He decided to try something different, maybe a streaming show. That ended up being “Ted Lasso.”
Jason Sudeikis, who first played the title soccer coach in popular NBC Sports ads, sketched out the show concept and story lines with his friends Brendan Hunt (Coach Beard in the series) and Joe Kelly. “Then the universe brought Bill Lawrence into the mix, and he actually made the son of a gun happen,” Sudeikis told The Times in 2021.
“Ted Lasso” became a pandemic phenomenon. Lawrence was a showrunner on the first two seasons and then stepped away in Season 3 to work on “Shrinking.” (Of the divisive third season, he said, “I don’t think fans who loved ‘Ted Lasso’ ever turned on ‘Ted Lasso.’”)
While Lawrence is still an executive producer, he no longer actively works on the show. Similarly, his deal with Warner Bros. mostly kept him from working on Disney’s “Scrubs” revival beyond the pilot.
Of course, it’s not like he needs the work. At least not right now.
“One of the lessons I’ve learned in Hollywood is, if people are silly enough to let you do stuff, you ought to do as much as you can,” he said. “I made some stinkers, and I will without a doubt do something else that doesn’t work — I hope it’s not any of these shows — and then I will go back to where you’ve got to kick and scream to get to make stuff again.”
“Anybody that I mentored even a little over the years, I try to remind them they’re obligated to give me one last job when I’m unhireable,” he added. “Because it’s a fun gig.”
Jeremy Egner is the television editor, overseeing coverage of the medium and the people who make it. He joined The Times in 2008.
The post A TV Empire Built on Humor and Heart appeared first on New York Times.
