Quinta Brunson didn’t expect her network comedy, Abbott Elementary, to get so popular so fast. Based on her own grade school years, the workplace mockumentary follows a group of teachers in an underfunded public school, treating a heavy subject with lightness and joy in episodes chock-full of mile-a-minute jokes and West Philly references. Beloved both on social media and the airwaves, it became the first ABC show to quadruple its ratings since its premiere.
The swift support, Brunson admits, was a bit unexpected. “To have only had a few episodes [air] and just for it to be an abundance of love, conversation, and just enjoyment of the show is just so, like, I don’t know. I am just so happy, so overwhelmed,” she tells BAZAAR.com. “It was weird to feel like I had to pull back from Twitter because of too much positivity. I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with so many nice messages and nice comments.’”
Nevertheless the star is excited for Abbott’s dedicated fan base to see everything else the first season has in store. “I think everyone is so used to bingeing TV now, but we’re not even in the middle of our season,” says Brunson. “There’s so much more for people to see that I hope they enjoy.”
Below, BAZAAR.com speaks with Brunson about creating a new kind of workplace comedy, West Philly deep cuts, and how the role of Janine almost went to someone else.
Where did the first idea that became Abbott Elementary come from?
The kind of moment of exact inspiration was going to visit my mom a few years back when she was about to retire. I just went back home to Philly and was in her classroom with her. She was staying at school late for a parent-teacher conference, and in order to spend more time with her, I went to her school and decided to be with her there. I went to the same school she taught at when I was younger—I was in her kindergarten class—so it wasn’t that foreign, but it had been a while since I had been in a room with her because I’d moved to Los Angeles.
This particular parent-teacher night was very late. It went on until eight o’clock, and I was a little bit upset by that, because my mom’s school wasn’t in the best neighborhood. But she barely had any care. It’s what their principal wanted them to do, and so they were doing it. While being there, I was talking to her about wanting her to retire and she was saying, “Yeah, I’m getting there.” And I’m like, “How can you not wanna retire at this point? You’re of age.” But she really just loved the job so much that she didn’t know if she was ready.
I’m simultaneously getting upset because we’re here so late and no parents have come in. Then at 7:59, literally, a parent comes in. I just was even more upset. I was like, “Oh, how could you? You had so much time.” But this parent was a nurse and she brought her son in with her. And my mom was so happy that this parent came, because she really wanted to talk to them. Seeing just that beautiful moment of my mom sitting there having this parent-teacher conference, while her student, the woman’s son, played with blocks in the corner, and I was just sitting at my mom’s desk and kind of watching all the characters from her school come in and out of the room. That was kind of the moment where I was like, “I think I wanna make a show about this.”
It’s so pure. This is a beautiful workplace where it’s easy to look at it from the outside and think it’s horrible, but if you come into the school with these teachers and see how much they do for these students, it’s an entirely beautiful experience.
Through the turns to camera to break the fourth wall it really does feel like you’re in it with them.
That was kind of what inspired the idea of making it a mockumentary. I really wanted audience members to feel like they were in the school instead of looking at the school from the outside in. I think you can get away with a lot more comedy that way, if you feel like you also teach at Abbott or go to Abbott, because I think that’s what allows my mom to find the joy in her job. She’s there with these people who care and everything.
Fun fact: Mockumentary actually doesn’t break the fourth wall, because it never has a wall. Our whole premise has no walls—the audience is always invited in.
JEN GARCIA
Why did you think it was important to tell this story about educators?
More than I thought it was important at the time, I really just thought it was ripe ground for a good comedy. I had the idea for this show three or four years before the pandemic even happened. I think when I was developing it, there wasn’t necessarily this nationwide push for the awareness of how much teachers go through yet. That kind of happened during the pandemic where everyone was suddenly aware of how much teachers deal with, in addition to them also dealing with COVID. It happened to wind up coming at this time where I think people have had their relationship changed with teachers in this country.
Ultimately, it was important to me just because it was a ripe world for comedy, and I thought it was a good time to, if anything, show a different-looking workplace comedy. The makeup of my mom’s school was naturally a more predominantly Black space, and I did think that’d be cool, because I hadn’t really seen that type of space in any workplace comedies.
It’s so cool to see all the West Philly references. Is it just so much fun to include so many details from your hometown in the show?
It is so fun. We don’t lead with putting those references in, but it’s fun because they come up organically. We go, “Well, where would this character shop at, or where would they be getting their lunch?” Or, for the Boyz II Men [songs in Episode 2], like, “What were Mr. Johnson’s favorite songs when he was in his prime?” Those things so inherently go Philly.
Instead of going for the broader joke with our references, we thought it made our world feel a little bit more authentic to go with the very niche parts of Philadelphia. Weirdly, the farther you go, the more specific you go and the more universal it becomes. For instance, one of our episodes had a local newsman, Jim Gardner, in it, and we did a whole cold open based on us watching Action News, which is a very popular news station in Philadelphia. It’s super hyper-specific, but at the end of the day, everybody has a hometown where they love their news reporters. It helps people to imagine their own hometowns too.
There’s so much more to come. Some of them are so niche that I’m like, “Maybe we took it too far?” But I kinda don’t care ’cause I’m like, “That’ll be cool.” Maybe it’ll put those places on the map and give Philly a different sense of pride.
Has there been a joke that people haven’t caught yet on Twitter that you really enjoyed putting in the show?
One thing that I really loved that I didn’t see—I haven’t been combing Twitter or anything, so I don’t know, maybe people did pick up on it—is a joke, but it reveals so much about Janine, my character. In the “New Tech” episode (Episode 4), we have her say that she had to potty-train herself and her parents didn’t teach her how to read, so she learned from a program. It is a joke, but what I love about it is it reveals so much about Janine’s past really quickly.
With the 22-minute sitcom, you only have so much real estate to reveal the past of someone and give the audience insights into who these people are. Because I wanted the show to be more funny than heavy—since we’re already dealing with a potentially heavy situation—it was important to me in our room to stick those moments in there underneath a joke, so that even the audience member isn’t really thinking about the context of like, “Whoa, that was pretty deep though. She got some stuff behind if her parents didn’t teach her to read, and she had to potty-train herself.”
It kind of goes with the whole ethos of the show. Like, excuse my language, this is real shit. This is very heavy stuff, but you insert the comedy into it.
Mm-hmm. We enjoyed doing that, and I enjoyed doing that with my comedy personally, because when I go to Philly or when I go to my mom’s school, the teachers there know that shit is bad. They know what it is. What they’re doing is making the best out of their days and getting to the next day and making life feel good for these kids.
So these teachers laugh, they make brass jokes about what’s going on, but they keep it moving. That was a lot of what we wanted to bring to this too. These aren’t people who are constantly saddened by their situation. They don’t have the time. They have so many other things to do. It was important to kind of bring that there, because I think that’s the humanity in all of it. A lot of us go through tough stuff, but we’re not sitting there sad about it all day. We have to get to the next day.
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I assume as the creator you would get to play, like, anyone. Why did you go for someone all optimistic and idealistic like Janine, rather than someone like the principal, Ava?
There were a couple of reasons. When the show was first developed, Janine was more of a complete side character, not at all as prevalent as she is in the iteration that made it to TV, and it really revolved around Barbara. When we really started getting into the mechanics of a documentary crew, it turned into, well, who would be the most inviting to this documentary crew? It wouldn’t be Barbara. It would be Janine and Ava, but Janine would be the one who would be trying to show the world how good this world is. Here’s how great teaching is, like, trying to compensate. So she became a bigger character, but initially, it was a side character.
When I pitched the show, I didn’t even necessarily put myself in it. That was kind of an open role I was thinking, and it was really the network that was like, “You’re crazy if you think we bought this show without you in it.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, got it. Didn’t know, thought I had an option to just make something and not be in it.” I wound up taking on the role of Janine, and she was already a side character that was gonna be this optimistic spark in this world with people who have been doing it forever, and that new life into it. So when the role was mine, I saw something really cool in it.
I love playing, like, grounded characters who are closer to real-life people, and I think Janine is that. She’s a lot more optimistic than me, which is also fun, ’cause it really feels like I’m not playing myself. She’s a whole different bag of energy. As far as like, with Ava, I just always saw someone like Janelle [James]. I never saw that role for myself at all. I knew that that was going to be someone else who was fully capable of that character that I had dreamt up. I don’t think I could play Ava. I just think that role was so Janelle’s, and Sheryl’s role was for Sheryl [Lee Ralph]. I do think Janine was for me.
It’s funny that you say Barbara was the center at first. The way you describe your mom, I imagine that Barbara might be based a little bit on your mom.
Yeah, absolutely. Barbara to me represents the best parts of my mom. As you see more of Barbara throughout the show, and I think people are seeing it already, the potential to be sweet and funny, but also the potential to be a hard ass and to not have time for stuff that she knows won’t work because she’s been doing this forever. That’s kind of how my mom was as a teacher. The sweetest people just adore her and they love her, but at the same time, she doesn’t have time for mess.
Getting Sheryl was really incredible. A lot of people see their mothers in her or their favorite teachers in her. She definitely has that energy.
When the show first popped off, plus clips were posted next to the “He Got Money” meme and some of your earlier work, it felt like you’d become kind of the queen of Twitter. How does it feel to see your work have such an impact?
I am so in awe. I’m so amazed, humbled—like, overwhelmed. When we were all making it, from the show’s inception to it being written to it being produced and being shot, everybody involved felt like we had a good show here. All of us felt that way. So for it to go out to the world and the world to feel the same way, that’s weirdly a rare experience—that creator-audience relationship—and especially for it to have happened so fast.
I was expecting maybe the show finishes its first season, and then people will realize we have this great show, because that’s how it goes with sitcoms a lot. To have only had a few episodes and just for it to be an abundance of support, love, conversation, and just enjoyment of the show is just so, like, I don’t know. I am just so happy, so overwhelmed.
It just feels really good, because at the end of the day, it’s not just me who works on this show. It’s somewhere between 200 and 300 people who have put all their work into this show. So when I’m seeing all this appreciation, I’m happy because it really justifies all the hard work and care that everyone has put into this show. It’s just so warm. I can’t believe that we get to experience this kind of love in real time.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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Quinta Brunson on the Overnight Success of Abbott Elementary
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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