Bill Lawrence Receives ATX TV Festival's 2026 Showrunner Award

Bill Lawrence — the prolific creator behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Cougar Town, Shrinking, and Rooster — was honored with the ATX TV Festival’s 2026 Showrunner Award at the closing night event, recognizing his singular influence on television and his commitment to collaboration and mentorship. The award, only its second ever (the first went to David E. Kelley), was presented before a packed house, with Lawrence joined onstage by a rotating cast of collaborators spanning three decades.

Moderator Hope Sloop (Decider) led the wide-ranging conversation, which touched on first impressions, embarrassing early credits, the creative culture Lawrence fosters on set, and new details about Shrinking Season 4.

The panel opened with Connie Britton reflecting on their shared roots. She and Lawrence both got their starts on Spin City in the 90s, she as an actress learning on the job, he as a first-time showrunner still in his 20s. “We both learned a lot since then,” she said.

Sarah Chalke recalled that when she came in to audition, Lawrence knocked over a glass of water while reaching out to shake her hand. “That’s not something that had ever happened to me before or since,” she said, adding that the moment immediately put her at ease in a way most auditions don’t.

Zach Braff described how Lawrence would actively warm up the room during callbacks, cracking jokes even after hearing the material hundreds of times. “He would literally go warm up the room for you,” Braff said. “I’ve taken that on when I cast things now.”

Michael Urie’s introduction to Lawrence came at the table read for Shrinking‘s first episode, their first time meeting in person after an on-tape audition. Before the read began, Lawrence addressed the assembled cast: “Nobody gets fired from table reads in my shows.” When the table read reached Urie’s character, who doesn’t speak in the first episode, Lawrence stopped to give him a full introduction anyway, telling the room he was a series regular and letting him mine his role in the episode, putting gas in his car.

Scott MacArthur explained that his path to Rooster came via his background as a hockey player, a role requiring someone who could skate while drunk and fall convincingly. He credited his prop team connection from Running Point with enabling one of his favorite moments on the show: cracking open a beer on a player’s helmet without struggling with the tab mid-scene. “Because we had a relationship,” he said, “I could just ask.” He praised Bill for allowing him to suggest the funny moment.

Sarah Chalke recalled receiving script sides in Bill Lawrence’s own handwriting, meaning the pages had been finished minutes before shooting. “Bill Lawrence’s training made me a chaos champ,” she said.

Donald Faison shared that he and Braff were out the night before shooting the famous “Poison” dance sequence from Scrubs — and that when Lawrence told him he was about to dance to the Bell Biv Devoe track, Faison’s first (hungover) reaction was, essentially, I’ve got this. The resulting routine went viral and has since been incorporated into Fortnite.

Urie described the experience of being handed the Brian monologue in Shrinking, a long confession speech he was then asked to deliver again, verbatim, two episodes later. “I was able to really prepare it,” he said, describing how he planned specific gestures to repeat exactly. He noted Apple’s social team later cut the two takes together into a single video. Lawrence jokingly noted that the monologue also represented two script pages he didn’t have to write.

The panel went around on the worst credits. MacArthur half-remembered a commercial for a massage business. Urie did a play in Austin (Like the Mountains) that no one attended, and which he said should have been documented as a behind-the-scenes cautionary tale. Britton did a plastic surgery commercial and also played Shirley Temple’s mother in Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story (part of ABC’s The Wonderful World of Disney). Chalke pointed to Vancouver movies of the week generally, singling out a Y2K thriller that Zach Braff later found and screened for the cast to embarrass her. Faison recounted doing a sci-fi film in which his character was the first to die, then having to promote the movie while denying that fact, only to screen it in front of the Hot 97 audience. Braff cited a CBS Schoolbreak Special called My Summer as a Girl as particularly embarrassing. Lawrence was not immune, mentioning the TV version of Rush Hour that he helmed.

Likewise, the panel discussed their favorite career moments. Lawrence praised the assembled cast effusively, noting that knowing talented, funny people and being able to call them for work is the best part of the job.

For Braff, Faison, and Chalke, the clear answer was Scrubs, both the original run and the revival. Chalke said she learned about comedy by going to work every single day, with Lawrence present on set, offering real-time direction.

Urie described being “in shock” that he’d stumbled into this family. MacArthur said that from his very first day on Rooster, the generosity and inclusion coming from the top of the production were unlike anything he’d experienced. Britton observed that it always comes from the top and that Lawrence’s collaborative spirit filters all the way down through cast and crew.

Lawrence confirmed that Karen Gillan and Christian Slater are joining Shrinking in Season 4, alongside the returning Michael J. Fox. The season also features a time jump, but Lawrence and Urie quickly delved into jokes about it being 45 years in the future (“wait ’til you see Harrison [Ford],” Urie jokes).

Asked what it takes for an actor to thrive in a Lawrence show, Lawrence offered a specific answer: the ability to move seamlessly between broad comedy and genuine emotion, without looking forced. “If you do it poorly, you look real eggy and cringy,” he said. “Every one of these actors can do that. It’s a tightrope.”

MacArthur spoke about Lawrence’s willingness to “embrace the jam” — to improvise, play, and trust actors enough to let them go somewhere unexpected. On his first day on Rooster, he ad-libbed a joke that he described as wildly bold. 

Lawrence described his directorial philosophy as giving actors a safety net to try things that might seem embarrassing or wrong, because those moments, more often than not, are the ones that end up on television.

Asked about specific mentorship moments, Faison said flatly that before Scrubs, he couldn’t tell jokes in front of people. Lawrence acknowledged using two unconventional techniques when he wanted actors to adjust their line readings: humming the intonation he wanted in nonsense syllables (since that wasn’t technically a line reading), or complimenting the actor’s table-read version, mimicking something he wanted rather than something they did, hoping they’d forget. The second technique, he admitted, blew up on him when Braff started directing his own cuts, and Lawrence could no longer use the table-read method as leverage.

The evening closed with an audience member asking Lawrence about his favorite line he’d ever written. He credited himself and co-writer Neil Goldman for Michael Urie’s long monologue, then offered a single best line from Scrubs: the moment when Carla asked the Janitor if he’s familiar with the phrase “delusions of grandeur,” and Neil Flynn replied, “I believe I coined that term.” Flynn improvised it (and many of his lines), but Lawrence’s parting instruction to the room: “When you leave here, the story is I wrote that.”

Scrubs, its revival, and Cougar Town are available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu. Shrinking streams on Apple TV, while Rooster can be found on HBO Max.