Donald Faison

Watch Faison in almost any scene and he is the one enjoying himself. His characters are confident, sometimes cocky, mostly relaxed, and he plays them as people who decided the room was theirs before they walked in. The timing is quick and the comedy is often physical: a shoulder, a walk, a face pulled a beat early, so the body gets to the joke before the line does. He is good at this. It has been both his living and his limit.

He began in commercials and small film parts in 1992, in Juice and Sugar Hill, and broke through three years later as Murray Duvall in Clueless (1995), a film we rate highly. Amy Heckerling's comedy runs on slang and on teenagers who take status seriously, and Murray is the boy who takes it most seriously of all while pretending he does not. We went back to it expecting to remember Alicia Silverstone and found ourselves waiting for Murray, because Faison is so loud and so certain, and so exactly in step with Heckerling's ear for how these children talk, that the film brightens whenever he turns up. The television series that followed (1996 to 1999) kept him in the part.

Then came Scrubs (2001 to 2010), Bill Lawrence's hospital comedy, and Dr Chris Turk, the surgical intern and best friend to Zach Braff's J.D. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it at length, but it is the role that defined him, and the double act with Braff is what most people mean when they say his name. Around it he took supporting parts in Remember the Titans (2000), Uptown Girls (2003), Skyline (2010) and Kick-Ass 2 (2013), and television in The Exes (2011 to 2015), with voice work for Robot Chicken and Star Wars projects on the side.

Kick-Ass 2 is the one we can speak to, and we barely noticed him in it. That is the film's fault more than his: Jeff Wadlow's sequel is loud, flat and unsure whether it is joking, and Dr Gravity is one more costume in a crowd. It is a fair picture of the problem. Faison's best work is in ensembles, as the sidekick with the sharper timing, and the parts on offer to a sidekick after a decade as Turk tend to be smaller versions of Turk.

He knows it. He has said, plainly, "I don't want to be just considered a breakout comedic supporting actor. I want to be a breakout actor in anything that's a lead." Nobody has yet taken him up on it. A Scrubs revival is noted for 2026; it will be a pleasure to see the two of them again, and it will not answer his question.