Bill Lawrence in ‘Scrubs’ reboot, ‘Bad Monkey’, Steve Carell HBO show

From a budgetary perspective alone, Bill Lawrence — the writer behind “Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso,” “Cougar Town” and “Shrinking” — shouldn’t have filmed his new Apple TV+ series “Bad Monkey” in Florida.

“There’s no tax benefit and it’s immediately more expensive,” Lawrence says. “There are so many rules about nature and what you can do. Every 20 minutes there was a huge storm, which forced production to stop. Animals were running around everywhere. It was difficult. But it was important to Carl.”

“Carl” is Carl Hiaasen, Lawrence’s favorite author and the famed Miami-based writer behind the 2013 novel “Bad Monkey,” from which the new series is adapted. Before Hiaasen would sign the show, he had one major condition: you must film it in Florida.

“I went from thinking it wasn’t worth it when I was there (because it was a nightmare) to being very grateful,” Lawrence says of the production challenges there. “All the restrictions became part of the show. For example, the red light in the show is real. When we got there, we weren’t allowed to take photos on certain beaches. The turtles were about to hatch and the keys were lit [turtle-safe] red lights, so it looked noirish. And when deer and birds ruined shots, we just put a camera on them, and they became all the transitions for the show. In the end it was all worth it. But man, it was tough.”

“Bad Monkey,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, stars Vince Vaughn as a former Miami police officer who is now a Florida Keys health inspector but longs to rejoin the force. When he comes across a sawed-off human arm, he investigates what he hopes will be the murder case that gets him his badge back. (And yes, there is a real monkey who gets caught up in the story.) Like all Hiaasen stories, Florida and its strange citizens are a big part of the plot.

Lawrence says he has a bit of a love-hate relationship with Florida. His relatives (including his parents, who now live in Orlando) are from out of state, and it is that family connection that first inspired his interest in Hiaasen’s novels.

“I started reading his books when I was fifteen,” says Lawrence. “He is an icon there. And he’s one of my biggest influences. There is a direct line between the surreal satire and crazy situations of Carl Hiaasen, and the crazy scenarios and ridiculous fantasies in ‘Scrubs.’

The adaptation of “Bad Monkey” became a passion project for Lawrence, who wrote the first script for the show seven years ago. He then spent almost ten years trying to achieve this.

When Lawrence first met with Jason Sudeikis several years ago, it was for “Bad Monkey” – before Sudeikis brought up “Ted Lasso,” and they went down that path together instead.

However, ‘Bad Monkey’ remained a priority for Lawrence, and ironically it was the success of ‘Ted Lasso’ that gave Lawrence the career momentum to finally get it off the ground. But even as Hollywood got excited about the project, Lawrence knew that Hiaasen — who had felt burned when previous adaptations of his books went poorly (including a Mike Nichols project with Harrison Ford, who just so happens to be the star of Lawrence’s “Shrinking”) — that wasn’t. ready to return the affection.

“He has enormous, healthy skepticism about Hollywood,” says Lawrence. “He hasn’t always had the best experiences here. And he doesn’t need it. He is a huge best-selling author and environmental activist. Until a few years ago he was a journalist at the Miami Herald. Then I convinced him to let me do this, and it was the most surreal thing in the world. He’s a friend now, but imagine going to your favorite author and saying, “I love this book, and I want you to let me write six or seven chapters and put them in the middle of it.” It was crazy.”

The successful adaptation of Hiaasen contemporary Elmore Leonard’s books into series like “Justified” helped soften this stance. And Lawrence says Hiaasen was already a fan of “Scrubs” and “Ted Lasso” when they met, which also helped bring the author on board. Out of respect, Lawrence says he made the extra effort to keep Hiaasen informed of any major changes he made to the original story.

“Worst case, he’d say, ‘Why?’ And then I would explain. We would talk it out,” Lawrence says. ‘But at best he would give me other ideas. I haven’t felt really nervous about doing a TV show in a while. But I didn’t want to let Carl down.”

How much does Hiaasen mean to him? Lawrence reveals that the next project he and co-producer Matt Tarses are working on – a 10-episode HBO comedy starring Steve Carell – was also inspired by the author.

“Steve’s character is loosely based on Carl Hiaasen,” he says. “Matt and I met Carl, and he is so self-effacing and self-deprecating, and doesn’t consider himself the literary genius that we consider him to be. But Steve plays a “man of the people” author who goes to a snooty New England college where his daughter teaches. He accidentally becomes entrenched in that college life, and we see him as a fish out of water trying to navigate it.

Lawrence has been splitting his time between these projects as well as Season 2 of “Shrinking,” his Apple TV+ series that he oversees with Brett Goldstein. After a long hiatus due to the Hollywood strikes, “Shrinking” returns on October 16 and Goldstein will be in front of the camera this year. “I will say it’s not anytime soon,” Lawrence says of how much of Goldstein we’ll see. “You know who he is from the very first episode. We don’t do spoilers, but it’s pretty cool.”

Like “Ted Lasso,” Lawrence says he sees “Shrinking” as a three-season show. “We had to pitch the beginning, the middle and the end, so we said the first year was about grief, the second year was about forgiveness, and the third year was about moving forward,” he says. “The way I approach it with actors is that I need at least three seasons to tell this story. So know that this particular story will be over in three seasons. But if Apple is interested in continuing, whatever the incarnation is and the key players are interested in it, I would continue without a doubt.”

And if you ask about ‘Ted Lasso’, there’s no movement on that front. “The best of [questions about the future of ‘Ted Lasso’] is that it “replaced for a second the need to talk about whether ‘Scrubs’ would be rebooted or not,” Lawrence says. But he admits he’s recently turned it around: “The reason I accidentally said, ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to figure this out in the next six months’ on ‘Scrubs’ the other day was because I just wanted to stop talking about the ‘Ted Lasso’ thing.”

Now that he’s reignited the ‘Scrubs’ conversation, Lawrence believes there’s real momentum for a reboot to happen. There are still plenty of obstacles: “Scrubs” is a Disney show and Lawrence has a deal with Warner Bros., for example. TV. And the cast of the series is quite busy with a large number of projects.

“I find it fascinating that the passion for ‘Scrubs,’ and I’m so grateful for that, has never gone away,” says Lawrence. “Maybe it’s because Zach and Donald are such friends in real life and doing their podcast, and those T-Mobile commercials. None of us really need it, and that’s probably the biggest barrier to entry: everyone is super successful, so talented and lovely.”

But the cast is never too far away: Lawrence has a habit of bringing back stars from his previous series, both in front of and behind the camera. That includes Braff, who received an Emmy nomination for directing “Ted Lasso” and has a guest role on “Bad Monkey,” playing a different kind of doctor.

“I asked him to do this because I wanted to hang out with him in Florida,” Lawrence says. ‘He got to play doctor again, but it’s not the same. He’s really funny, but there’s a sadness underneath. I’m just very proud of him.”

So… is that “Scrubs” reboot coming? “The business part of it can always get messed up. But I’m super hopeful,” he says. “It would be fun to do this not just because we want an excuse to hang out, but also because it’s fun to be creative. You don’t want to just send it in. But it would be interesting to see those characters older and see what new young kids look like in medicine right now, because it’s a heroic profession and no one does it to get rich. ”