If Quinta Brunson looks authentically stressed out on television, playing an overworked teacher at an under-resourced school, that’s because making a hit sitcom is (almost) as demanding. “This season, we were writing, filming and airing all at the same time, which for me is a lot,” says Brunson, resting her forehead in her palm and taking another sip from her electrolyte drink. To top it all, she is currently recovering from a nasty bout of food poisoning, but she showed up anyway. That’s the kind of person Brunson is: a comedy giant who still keeps her appointments.
Brunson’s show, Abbott Elementary, debuted on ABC in December 2021, and by its second episode had earned a perfect “100 per cent fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes and given the US network its highest ratings for a comedy since the finale of Modern Family. The first season was nominated for seven Emmys – it won three – making Brunson the youngest Black woman ever to be nominated in a comedy acting category, and the first to earn three comedy nominations in one year. Two more seasons have been commissioned, each with an extended 22-episode run.
None of this will surprise Abbott Elementary fans, who know it to be a reliably hilarious half-hour, full of infinite charm and surprisingly substantive satire of the US’s crumbling education system. Think Parks and Rec meets season four of The Wire. The real Brunson is notably different from Janine Teagues, the relentlessly chipper second-grade teacher she plays on the show. Their shared work ethic aside, Brunson says she’s more like the warm and wise kindergarten teacher Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), who is partly based on Brunson’s own mother – a 40-year veteran of the Philadelphia public school system.
“Growing up, it was just her job,” says Brunson, one of several offspring of teachers in the writers’ room. “But as I got older, I realised how hard that job was and how hard it is to have a family also … So yeah, I’m very empathetic to teachers.”
There’s also a little of Brunson in principal Ava (Janelle James), Abbott Elementary’s self-involved social-media queen. “Sometimes, there are things Ava says that come directly from my mouth,” admits Brunson, who is similarly at home on the socials. She came up in comedy via a self-produced Instagram series, while working a day-job fixing iPhones at the Apple Genius Bar. A random encounter with Paul Rudd in a Philadelphia cinema – he was in town to film Dinner for Schmucks; she was with a bad date, whom she ditched to go talk to the movie star – gave Brunson the encouragement she needed to pursue comedy as a career. “He was like: ‘If you want to do comedy and you love it and you can do it, then you should do it.’” Soon after, the cinema lobby edition of her Girl Who Has Never Been on a Nice Date sketch series turned her into an internet meme (“A large popcorn! He got money!”), and she got her TV breakthrough, as a lead on HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show.
Janine may seem the furthest of the characters from Brunson’s true self, but that’s not entirely true. “She mirrors back a lot of what we don’t want to see in ourselves – the blind optimism, the overstepping, the just being a corny person. So I do see some of myself in her … and it’s a part that I don’t want to see.”
It’s particularly hard, however, to imagine Janine being, as Quinta is, the 33-year-old head honcho of a hit TV show, responsible for the livelihoods of some 150 cast and crew. For Brunson, though, leadership comes naturally. “I love Abbott so much and I’m supported very well by everybody. It makes it easy to run the ship, because the ship is so good.”
Brunson’s recent appearance on chatshow Jimmy Kimmel Live! was a fine example of her expert ship-steering. She was there to promote Abbott Elementary, but also to receive an apology from Kimmel for his “dumb comedy bit” at the Emmys, when he lay on the stage for the entirety of her acceptance speech for outstanding writing for a comedy series. Twitter commentators were angry about the perceived disrespect to Brunson, the first Black woman to win that award solo. Kimmel apologised for stealing her moment, and Brunson’s response was a masterclass in how to acknowledge amends without diminishing oneself: “Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say, but I, honestly, was in such a moment of having a good time – like I just won my first Emmy!” she said, to applause from the audience. “I had a good time!”
Everyone else involved in Abbott Elementary seems to be having a good time, too, particularly Broadway star Ralph, who has been introduced to a new generation of worshipful fans, and actor Tyler James Williams who, as Gregory, Janine’s slow-burn staffroom romance, has become a certified heartthrob and the internet’s newest boyfriend. Prior to Abbott Elementary, Williams was best known to most TV viewers as that kid off Everybody Hates Chris, but that hasn’t prevented the insinuation that Brunson has somehow exploited her authority by – in the words of one Jezebel article – casting herself opposite “an absolute smokeshow of a man”. Brunson finds this both bemusing and sexist. “What’s funny is when Tyler and I started working together, we both knew he was not regarded as this ‘hot man in Hollywood’. I told him: ‘Dude, you’re gonna turn into a heartthrob, the way Gregory is getting written.’”
It’s not the thirsting after Williams she objects to – that can only be celebrated – it’s the erasure of her own creative accomplishments, as well as those of other female TV writers. “I saw it with Issa [Rae] in Insecure.” Also Lena Dunham on Girls and Mindy Kaling on The Mindy Project. “There’s this narrative that gets put on it, like: ‘Oh my God, they gave themselves a hot male lead!’ Whereas, actually, this person is hot to you because we’re telling you they’re hot. You weren’t thinking about them before!”
This is the curse of the competent at work: if you’re good at your job, you make it look easy and if you’re really good at your job, your efforts become all but imperceptible. As the long-serving staff of Abbott Elementary could attest, often it’s the most essential people who are least rewarded and recognised.
Brunson is particularly aware of the danger of being taken for granted as it relates to her show’s involvement in the wider Philadelphia community. The production has partnered with charities such as Scholastic and DonorsChoose to buy books and school meals and help address the chronic underfunding the show depicts. But there’s a limit: “At a certain point I want to make sure we’re not taking the pressure off the government, y’know, because that’s not our job. It’s just a TV show. And I’d like to save room to be like, say, Succession, and do nothing at all!”
For teachers in the UK and elsewhere currently going on strike to protest pay and conditions, she has a simple message: “I support you! I really do! And I really think all teachers deserve to be paid way more.” But you’d probably expect that from the woman who created a show like Abbott Elementary. “Philadelphia gets a bad rap,” she says. “Like there’s a lot of violence, a lot of poverty – and these things are true – but I just wanted to offer a different depiction. One that shows the people who are there, who get by day by day, because I appreciate the resilience in humans, period.”
Brunson has turned this appreciation for ordinary hard work into an extraordinary career for herself and, somewhat ironically, her work life now couldn’t be further from that of the average schoolteacher. Since meeting Oprah Winfrey for the first time when she was interviewed on OWN last year, Brunson has been taken under her wing: “She’s become a very wonderful and supportive part of my life.” Oprah still hasn’t passed comment on Quinta’s performance as 80s-era Oprah in the comedy biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (“We’ve talked about so much since then that I don’t know if she did and I’ve forgotten … But I think she liked it?”). Last week, there was another pinch-me moment, filming a segment for Sesame Street. “It’s just a part of your childhood, so walking into that set and meeting the puppets and the puppeteers was just … whew … It’s like finding your old blanket again from when you were a baby. All these emotions come up.”
But just because she now knows how to get to Sesame Street doesn’t mean she’s about to forget where she came from. “I’ll always focus on what makes everyday people great. That’s the most rewarding work to me, because people making the decision to just get out of bed can sometimes be a heroic act.”
Abbott Elementary returns on Disney+ on Wednesday1 March.
