Zach Braff, best known for his long run on Scrubs and his feature Garden State, made his Broadway debut in Bullets Over Broadway Thursday evening.

Zach Braff In 'Bullets Over Broadway'

Braff graciously accepted a bouquet of flowers during the curtain call for the premiere of Bullets Over Broadway at the St. James Theater. The Woody Allen musical, adapted from his 1994 film of the same name, follows a struggling playwright (Braff), who gets some writing help from a local New York City mobster (Nick Cordero). Helene Yorke, Vincent Pastore, Marin Mazzie and Brooks Ashmanskas all costar in the stage production.

By stepping into the shoes of playwright David Shayne – a shade of Allen previously played by John Cusack – Braff had to try to find his own voice, but admitted sometimes that just wasn’t possible. “There are certain lines, certain jokes, you can’t say them without sounding like Woody Allen,” Braff admitted to Variety.

For Braff, getting the role in Bullets Over Broadway was a childhood dream realized.“It’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done,” he gushed. “I was a little kid, eight years old, looking up at musicals and going, ‘This is a job someone can have? God, please, can I do that?’”

Conceivably, Braff could be making a second-run on Broadway in the near future, as his hit comedy Scrubs has been optioned for a stage production, though the actor says he’s not interested in reprising his role of J.D.“They’re doing it,” Braff said of the Scrubs musical, adding “[Creator] Bill Lawrence wants my two cents, but I wouldn’t be in it. That’d be weird. It’d be like John Cusack doing my role in [the Bullets Over Broadway musical].”

In other Braff news, his Kickstarter-funded Wish I Was Here recently released its first trailer and is slated for release on July 25.

– Chelsea Regan

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