John C. McGinley. Photo credit: Russell Baer.

John C. McGinley (JCM): I love doing Scrubs because it keeps me close to Max. When you go do a film, you’ve got to pick everything up and go wherever you’re going to shoot—Buenos Aires, the Philippines—for four months. And the chances are, when you do go and relocate, that unfortunately whatever you’re shooting just isn’t going to be that great. Just because of the number of quality movies that you and I want to see… there’s not that many. And so when you get on a winner, you want to stay on it. And Scrubs is just something you can tell people you’re on and be proud of it. Or I can. And it’s in LA and with the new baby and with Max coming into puberty—which is a whole other thing—I want to be around. And Scrubs has facilitated that.

EP: So it allows for a lot of time to be home?

JCM: Absolutely. Look, when we’re shooting, we work five days a week, and we shoot 14 hours a day. So when Max gets there I’m tired, but who cares? We’re going outdoors, we’re playing baseball, we’re playing golf, we’re getting in the ocean, we’re running the dogs. I’m kind of the camp counselor dad.

EP: What is Max like? What are his hobbies, and what do you do together?

JCM: Max loves pinball. It started out as a way to address some of the fine motor skills challenges we were dealing with. The reason that pinball addressed the fine motor is because I make him pay. So you have to put 50 cents in, and to put 50 cents in, I wanted him to have two quarters in one hand and take it and put it in. Also, tracking that ball down to where it’s going to go and triangulating that ball with the flippers has been fantastic. So we have a big, old pinball machine. And I tested out as many as the guy had, and I found the one with the most spoken language, because Max does well with repetition. So we play a lot of pinball.

Also, Max loves dogs. He has three dogs and one at his mom’s house so he has four dogs. We play with the dogs nonstop down at the beach. And during the writer’s strike, last October until March, I built a baseball field. So we play a lot of baseball, go to the driving range, and he loves bowling; he likes the chaos, noise, and all the visual stimulation at bowling alleys. And he likes that Wii… loves that Wii.

Actor, John C. McGinley with his son Max, 11, his wife, Nichole and daughter, Billie Grace. Photo credit: Leigha Hodnet.

EP: What was your first reaction when you learned that your son had Down syndrome?

JCM: My first reaction was that I wanted to know what I did wrong. Why I deserved this. It had nothing to do with the child. It was all completely caught up in what I had done. And I just kind of beat myself up for a while. And because Max had microscopic holes in his heart and wasn’t introducing enough oxygen into the blood as it came to his lungs and heart, we had to stay in the neonatal intensive care unit for three weeks. But as a result of going to the NICU every morning you see this kid who doesn’t really care about you and your issues—the kid needs help. And so that came around; it takes the focus off of one’s self and onto this miracle. And so that’s what I did. But you start to transfer to the kid all your light and all your energy and the kid comes home and then before you know it you’re injecting your kid with needles and then he has sleep apnea. So it was challenging. It always struck me that parents of kids with special needs—now I can see this but I couldn’t at the time—that you’re thrust into a situation where you have an opportunity to be a great parent. Because you’re going to have to be. There’s that great lyric in the Paul Simon song that goes “breakdowns come and breakdowns go so what are you going to do about it, that's what I'd like to know.” And it’s a declaration of do. You’re going to have to do something here. Because the kid, on a lot of different levels, is not going to be able to. So what are you going to do? What are you going to bring? And it better be a lot. And so that’s what it felt like with Max.

EP: What has raising him brought to your career and the characters that you play?

JCM: In every script I have, the first thing I do is get a black and white composition notebook, and about ten pages in, I write out all the text in my own handwriting. It’s the quickest way I can memorize things and it’s also my favorite way to take the words away from the screenwriter or the playwright and make them my own. And on the first page are declarations about the things that I want the character or me to DO in this finite period of time that we have to shoot. For Cox over the last eight years, which was about three years into Max being born, the declarations of “do’s” that I wanted Cox to be able to execute, or find room for in every script, were to: a) show up, b) speak his piece, c) give compassion, d) give love, and finally get out. And the "give love," for Cox, seemed like a little bit of a contradiction since he is kind of a jackhammer with some of these kids. But in every episode, whether it’s a beat or a huge passage, there’s somewhere where John McGinley—through Cox—is channeling love towards these kids. Does it manifest itself in me mollycoddling them? No, not all the time. But Cox is channeling love through me and Max. And that’s how Max has affected what I do. And I can’t imagine it not being that in the margins of every composition book that I transfer now.

EP: As someone with years of experience and great success in the entertainment industry, how do you feel about the portrayal of individuals with disabilities in television and film?

JCM: Well, I have a pretty strong feeling about that. Mostly as it pertains to kids with Down syndrome because kids with Down syndrome have the physical markers of a person with challenges. I mean, you see some kids with autism, and you wouldn’t know until you saw either their behavior – or something. Well, kids with Down syndrome have markers and so when you see cowards like the “Ben Stillers of the world” producing profoundly mediocre films like Tropic Thunder and dropping the word “retard” 17 times in five minutes… well, I'll tell you something, when I see Ben, that just makes me want to pick on HIM now. Because there’s no militant arm of the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS) that’s going to respond to a transgression—like there is in the Jewish community with the Anti Defamation League. Or, God forbid, you go and say something against African Americans; you’re going to have the NAACP in your kitchen. We don’t have the militant arm at NDSS. We have kids who when THEY go to a protest, it looks funny because they ARE so nice, and you know damn well they would rather have a hug than hold a placard. So it really cuts me to the core. And it feels to me like the perfect storm of cowardice when you pick on people who can’t return serve. So for Ben Stiller—who directed Tropic Thunder—he is just such a punk coward.

EP: So Ben Stiller is not a friend of yours?

JCM: He couldn’t possibly be a friend of mine. Because he worked with the Farrelly brothers—doing Something About Mary—and the Farrelly brothers have championed a lot of special needs causes. So there is no way that you’re not—if you’re Ben stiller—aware that you’re perpetuating a negative stigma and that you’re doing something hurtful. And so while I don’t want to be another actor who’s going to tell somebody how to talk and what’s politically correct and what’s not, if you are aware that you’re hurting either caregivers or the people with Down syndrome, what’s the upside?

I don’t like any exclusionary language. I hate it. Because all it does it perpetuate negative stigmas about different groups. And where’s the upside? The upside, I assume, is when people use language like that is that someone is trying to elevate themselves by denigrating whoever the subject is. And it doesn’t work that way. It just makes you a jackass. And I loathe it. I hate bullies and that, to me, is like bully language.

I loathe it.

EP: What are your goals for Max’s future, as he transitions into his teenage years and adulthood?

JCM: Well, that seems to be the big question because, while kids with Down syndrome are young and cuddly and cute as a button, they skate along a little bit. And then the big question is: What happens with post secondary education? What do you do? Where are they going to go? Where are they going to be? We’re demolishing the house right now and part of the rebuild will be an adult suite for Max so that as he gets older, he’s not going to be in a little boy room; he’s going to be in a room that can accommodate anything he wants to do. A big room that if he wants to, hypothetically, paint over there then we’ll turn it into a painting room, if he wants to compose music over there, we’ll make that a music area. Or if he doesn’t want to do any of that—fine. But I guess tangibly right now, one thing we’re doing is trying to stay ahead of the physical space curve that will accommodate whatever Max wants to do. But I don’t know what Max is going to do 10 years from now.

EP: What advice would you give to new parents who learn that their child has Down syndrome?

JCM: Number one: you didn’t do anything wrong. First and foremost this is not reciprocity for any transgressions that you may have done when you were younger. You didn’t do anything. The kid has an extra 21st chromosome. That’s it. That’s number one. Number two: breathe. Get some air, because it’s going to be a while. Number three: start discovering stores of patience that you didn’t know existed within yourself. Because some things—reading, writing, walking, holding your hand, having a catch—are going to take a little longer. So if you can find a container with patience and sprinkle it generously over your Wheaties in the morning, do it.

EP: What is it you want people to know about people with Down syndrome?

JCM: Give kids with Down syndrome a fair shake—that’s all. That’d be great, for starters. And I would like people to stop referring to kids with disabilities as “retards”—it’s like a spear in our sternum because it so diminishes that kid’s capacity to do anything because he’s a “retard” – what is that? So that kid with Down syndrome is in the corner staring at the wall. Well guess what? Maybe that kid is doing his best—leave him alone. Or go give him a hug! How about that?

EP: You have mentioned that you were a jock in high school. Is Max involved in any sports and/or do you see him taking part in athletics in the future?

Well Max learned how to play baseball, and the rules of it, on the Wii game, which is fascinating. As a result, we’ve gone to a bunch of baseball games. He loves baseball. Right now he plays soccer more than baseball. He’s in a league where every kid has an assistant so they’re not spirally off onto other things. He does it on Saturday mornings in the fall and it’s fantastic. It’s hard to get him to surf because the water is too cold in California and I didn’t have enough money when Max was born to buy a pool so we got a hot tub. So Max’s perception of water is warm-to-hot. Not cold. And so when Max gets around cold water, the look and the question is: “Are you kidding? I’m not going in that. There’s a mistake – because I’m not going in that. You can turn the thermometer up and then I’ll go in.” Because he’ll go in the Atlantic in the middle of the summer – when it’s like bath water - but the Pacific is not Max’s friend, which is fine. He runs the dogs and it’s fine - he doesn’t really care about the ocean anyway. He cares about sending the dogs into the ocean. But he’s a very good swimmer. Also, Max is fast – really fast – chasing the dogs. It would be fascinating if he could ever channel that onto a track.

EP: Would you ever be open to him competing in the Special Olympics?

JCM: I dream about him participating in some track event. But I don’t want to set him up for failure or set him up to disappoint his father because his father had one aspiration in mind and Max had a distinctly other. So those are the kind of things where I don’t want to rely on serendipity, but I would like to support a serendipitous arrival at the Special Olympics.

EP: So he is very active in all different kids of sports and activities?

JCM: Max is instructed every minute of every day, so I try to introduce enormous amounts of play into his time. I mean - I want us playing. I want us going to bed at 7:30 freaking exhausted because we were on the beach playing with the dogs, because we were down playing baseball, on the trampoline, at the batting cages. Because we were playing soccer, pinball - I want him exhausted. Then I want do it all over again tomorrow morning.

EP: How did your involvement with The National Down Syndrome Society come about?

JCM: A bunch of groups contacted me after Max was born and we were just kind of circling the wagons trying to figure out what just happened. And then dealing with the different curve balls that Max was chasing, from sleep apnea to spasms – it always seemed like they were endless. And when his health kind of stabilized – from our perception of stabilized – at about two or three years in, I thought that what the NDSS was doing was pretty good and I liked the Buddy Walk. A lot of different groups are – I found – affiliated with different religions and stuff and I wanted to just be affiliated with the kids. I respect and love organized religions but I didn’t want to be exclusionary. So I didn’t want to just work with Roman Catholic kids with Down syndrome or just work with Buddhist kids with Down syndrome – I wanted to get the families. And so when I spoke to them and I liked this day, where I could really focus on this Buddy Walk and go to as many as I could – with the schedule and with Scrubs having some success – it felt like that’s where I could contribute and be an advocate who could gain access to the media. And I thought that would be helpful.