As of now, four episodes of Rooster are available on HBO Max, and one thing that makes the last two episodes, i.e., the third and fourth ones, special is that they are directed by an actor from Scrubs: Zach Braff. For the uninitiated, Braff is an experienced filmmaker in addition to being an actor. Moreover, the HBO series's creator, Bill Lawrence, is also his mentor.This week, Braff sat down for an interview with ScreenRant's Liam Crowley after the fourth episode, "Angry, Like An Angry Person", aired on HBO. In that interview, the actor and filmmaker addressed the experience of helming the third and fourth Rooster episodes for Bill Lawrence, who also created Scrubs. Discussing the freedom Lawrence gave him while directing Rooster, Zach Braff said:"Well, I mostly just direct for Bill [Lawrence]. I mean, I've done some pilots and stuff, but Bill and I spent so much time on Scrubs together, and after Garden State, he let me start directing Scrubs episodes. And we just have a really great shorthand. I know exactly what he wants, and he lets me play around with the camera a bit, which I really like. And he gives me a lot of freedom, which is fun because that's not the case for a lot of TV directors. A lot of times, people are just told, "Do exactly this, and go execute." But Bill and I have such a great shorthand after all these years that he lets me play a bit. And a lot of time, those sorts of things that weren't what he was considering, get into the show. So I directed a bunch of Scrubs, and I directed the second episode of Ted Lasso. And then I've directed five Shrinkings now, and two Roosters."Zach Braff and Rooster creator Bill Lawrence go back twenty years: View this post on Instagram Instagram PostBill Lawrence is a prolific showrunner and creator, as he worked on shows like Scrubs. Moreover, he is currently working on not one but three shows, namely, Ted Lasso, Shrinking, and Rooster. Thanks to his work on Scrubs, it's not surprising that he mentored Zach Braff when he was directing episodes of the medical sitcom.On this week's TV Insider interview, Braff was asked how he felt after being asked to direct an episode of Rooster. He responded:"It’s an honor. I’ve always wanted to direct for HBO. For 25 years, [Bill]’s been my mentor, and I know exactly what he wants. I try to introduce him to things that are outside of the box of what he wants sometimes, and sometimes he lets me do that, and other times he cuts them out of the episode. I remember for Ted Lasso, I put all these insanely cool shots in, and I saw the final cut, and none of them were in and I was like, “What happened to those shots?” He’s like, “The camera’s not going to be like a huge character in this show.” Bill respects my directing because the Venn diagram of where we overlap is in the writing, the comedy, the storytelling, and in the heart, but Bill’s not fascinated by cameras and clever shots as much as I am. So we’re a good pairing because I know exactly what he wants in the edit room. We’ve been sitting together for 25 years in the edit room, and I’ll be on set watching another director, and I’ll just stop them and go, “Bill’s gonna hate that, don’t do that.” And so I know what he wants, but also, we do this fun dance where I’ll shoot it in a more conventional way, so he has that option, but I’m gonna try and talk him into this [other idea]. He knows that’s why I think he likes me as a director because he knows I’m going to deliver exactly what he wants, but with the time extra time I have, I’m gonna try and push him into some cool s**t that, that he may not have thought of. And so I think that’s why we’re a good marriage."In the same interview, Braff also addressed what was special about directing these two particular episodes of Rooster:"Bill’s shows almost all have a mentorship theme. That’s something he’s very interested in writing about, so I know that that’s always going to be a component. When [Tommy] says to [Greg], “You know, this is college, you can be whoever you want to be,” I think I got goosebumps on set. I was like, “Oh, this is the show.” And also another theme in Bill’s shows is community. If you look at all of these shows, they’re often about a group of people helping each other through their lives with love and community, and finding community, and [Greg] has no one. He was left by his wife, and it really threw him. When he’s at that frat party, you see that he’s gonna find community here. Some of them will be his students, some of them will be his peers, and there’ll be love interests. And so he goes on this sort of escapade throughout the whole night, seeing the different worlds that he’s going to be finding community in, and I just love that."Catch the Zach Braff-directed episodes of Rooster on HBO Max.