Zach Braff’s Podcast Comedy ‘Alex Inc.’ Is “The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done”

The last time Zach Braff was on ABC, he was playing a bumbling but good-natured doctor. The times and setting may have changed, but as the premiere of Alex, Inc. proves, Braff’s mastery of slightly air-headed protagonists hasn’t.

Developed by Matt Tarses and directed and starring Braff alongside The Good Place‘s Tiya Sicar, Alex. Inc is a podcasting comedy with an origin story that’s already rooted in success. The series is an adaptation of Gimlet Media founder Alex Blumberg’s  journey from floundering man with an idea for a startup into the owner of a growing, ambitious, and established company. As Tares and Braff imagine it, this man’s dream of creating his own podcasting empire from scratch also put a strain on his home life, making for some built-in family sitcom antics.

“It just feels very current,” Braff told Decider at the Television Critics Association’s 2018 winter tour. “One thing that ABC is great at is doing very current [shows] — Modern Family is the ultimate example. We wanted to do the 2018 Modern Family, so what if the father had a startup? And what if it was a mixed race family? And what if the gender roles were swapped and mom was more of the breadwinner? We were trying to tell a very 2018 tale, and ABC is very into that.”

Though the series is based off of Blumberg’s story, Braff said it doesn’t follow Season 1 of the podcast Startup directly. “We wanted to use Alex as like a jumping off point. We didn’t want to be like ‘We’re going to recreate the podcast.’ So I met him, and bizarrely we were wearing the exact same outfit. But I love the show, I listen to the show,'” he said.

Braff’s co-star, Tiya Sicar, had a bit of a different take, revealing that the show’s real-life source material affected how she played her role. Sicar plays Rooni, Alex’s wife, who’s based on Blumberg’s real life wife Nazanin Rafsanjani “I wasn’t sure if I was right for the role because I had never played a mom before,” Sicar said. “She’s a real person, obviously, and she’s Persian, and I was like, ‘Guys. I know it’s Hollywood but c’mon. I can’t play a Persian woman.’ But I was like, ‘I’m just going to go for it and see what happens,’ and I had a really lovely, nice first meeting.”

The show marks one of the first times Braff has returned to television since Scrubs, and he’s returning in a big way. Not only is he starring in the series, but he will be directing many of the episodes. When asked what the shift from directing film to television has been like, Braff said, “The pace is the most insane thing. We make an episode in five days, and if you want the cinematography to be cool and you want to be a character, you really have to boogie.”

“You have to move so fast, and also, you know, when you’re working on features, the script’s locked,” he said. “We’re editing while we’re working, we’re writing while we’re working. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Alex, Inc. premieres on ABC tonight at 8:30/7:30c.

Where to stream Alex, Inc.