Yahoo Autos ‘Abbott Elementary’ Showrunner and Star Quinta Brunson Wants To Tell Great Stories First and Effect Change Later
Quinta Brunson has earned three Emmy nominations for Abbott Elementary — one as an executive producer on the show, one for writing its pilot and one for her lead performance as Janine, an idealistic and ambitious young teacher at a Philadelphia elementary school. The ABC sitcom is the only network show to get a series nomination — it also earned nods for supporting actors Janelle James, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tyler James Williams — and was a breakout hit last season thanks to its sharp humor and endearing ensemble cast. Brunson spoke with THR about how she developed the workplace comedy, how she always conceived it as a network series and how she folds real-life topics into the show’s storylines.
Did you feel, from the beginning, that your show would be nominated for these Emmys?
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Not really — I just felt that Abbott was good. I remember one show I pitched.… I thought, this is a show that would probably find its footing a little bit in the first and second season, and then it knows what it is in the third season. But Abbott, from the beginning, felt so fully formed. And once we started filming it, I did start to think we had something unique.
Do you remember what that moment was?
We were editing the first episode [after the pilot]. I looked at the director’s cut and was like, “Whoa.” Sometimes a first cut can be horrifying. But with this, the jokes were hitting, the cast was incredible. I started thinking, “Oh boy. I think we may have something quite promising here.”
Your mom was a teacher. How did her profession inspire this show?
I grew up with my mom as a teacher for years. I went to school where she taught, so I spent a lot of time with her in the mornings and after school — just fully entrenched in the school life. When I moved out to L.A., I would go back to [visit] this setting that I knew so well. I [started] looking at it with a different eye. The familiarity pops out to you a little bit more. Like, I remember this feeling. I remember the smell. And I watched my mom’s co-workers pop in and out. I noticed how my mom had always kept a certain crop of co-workers around her. Her relationship with the principal was always unique; the custodian always played a vital role in my life, because I was a kid who would stay at school until 5 o’clock in the afternoon. I love workplace comedies very much, they are just my favorite things in the world. I saw all the characters so easily, it just was so fully formed to me. My knowledge of this world [came] in handy.
How did the ensemble come together?
Tyler was the only one who was fully in my mind. I actually reached out to him and was like, “I have something I want you to keep on your radar before you wind up taking another show somewhere.” Everybody else auditioned. I was looking for an essence that really wasn’t easy to write on paper. Janelle had it. Lisa Ann Walter had it. Chris Perfetti had it, and that was a shocker because his was the least formed character in the pilot. And then Sheryl Lee Ralph. I thought she was so unavailable that I didn’t let her name cross my mind. There was a world where I wanted Barbara to be [played by] a total newcomer. Someone like Sheryl, who is big, but not the biggest star in the world, was so appealing to me. There’s a familiarity with her, but also the opportunity to present her to the world in a brand new way.
Once you had your actors in place, did they inform the way you wrote their characters?
After the pilot, we had seven episodes finished before we started filming. We finished writing halfway through filming. We got to really write these characters the way we saw them — the actors’ voices didn’t necessarily influence what we were doing, which I think was good. That helped us trust ourselves for the second season. The writers know these characters. Their voices, though, have added to it. I know how someone will say a joke a certain way. We’ve seen their strengths, and it definitely informs what we write.
