Quinta Brunson Has A Hit. Better Yet, She Has A Plan.

Last Updated: 12 April 2022

Jonny Marlow

Quinta Brunson is not Janine Teagues, though you’d be hard-pressed to convince her Abbott Elementary students otherwise. For one

thing, the two adhere to different wardrobes: As Quinta, her style vacillates between comfy-chic and curve-hugging glam, outfits she can wear when she’s “off to do tiny hot girl things.” (Brunson stands just around five feet tall.) As Janine, she favors budget-friendly riffs on—as one Abbott character points out in the series’s 10th episode—Mr. Rogers Lite. But it’s Brunson’s body language that best illustrates the shift between the person and her creation: As Janine, she seems almost to effervesce, to buzz at a frequency higher than the determined but depleted teachers who flank her. As Quinta, her voice dips a few keys lower; her spine loosens; her eyelids grow heavier, though with self-assurance rather than lethargy. Audiences catch a glimpse of this version—the real Quinta—whenever Janine shoots the camera a fourth-wall-breaking, deadpan aside on Abbott’s mockumentary-style set.

And yet, there’s something undeniable that fuses Quinta and Janine together—something beyond the manufactured bond of actress and character. Lisa Ann Walter, who plays Abbott’s brusque Sicilian second grade teacher Melissa Schemmenti, chalks it up to this: “There is nobody in the world that doesn’t love her.”

The 32-year-old creator behind the record-breaking ABC sitcom about an underfunded Philadelphia elementary school, Brunson is sometimes amused by this affection. As she told Seth Meyers

">during a late-night appearance in March, she’s occasionally recognized as Janine whenever she’s back home in Philadelphia. While perusing a liquor store several weeks ago, a fan noticed her and asked, “Ain’t you Janine?” She confirmed their suspicions, but they followed up: “Yeah, girl, you need to dump that boyfriend.” (Janine’s boyfriend throughout most of season 1 is the wannabe rapper Tariq, played by Zack Fox.) “I was like, ‘Okay,’” Brunson told Meyers. “Most people in Philly just think the show is real.”

Although inspired by true events, neither the show nor Janine are, of course, real, but the fan fervor surrounding them suggests they sure feel real. Such devotion speaks to what Tyler James Williams, who plays Janine’s co-worker and romantic interest Gregory, recognizes as Brunson’s earliest hunch: “She was testing a theory, and the theory was right. America needs heart first right now. And that’s what I think is her superpower.”

Formerly a stand-up comedian who acquired a following for her clever grasp of internet culture—

">memes, in particular—Brunson, a West Philadelphia native, was hired in 2014 by BuzzFeed, where she remained as a producer and sketch-show regular until 2018. By then, Brunson had inched her way into the television landscape. She created shows for platforms including YouTube Red and Facebook Watch, as well as a couple network pilots that weren't picked up, and hopped between small recurring roles until she landed a full-time co-star and writer gig with HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show. When the pandemic rolled around in 2020, she’d already had the idea for Abbott Elementary, courtesy of her mother.

“America needs heart first right now. And that’s what I think is her superpower.”

At this point Brunson has told the story hundreds of times over, but for those in need of a primer: A year before elementary school teacher Norma Jean Brunson decided to retire, her daughter flew from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to visit. Norma Jean was hosting a parent-teacher conference from noon to 8 p.m., so Brunson—the youngest of her parents’s five children—sat around in her classroom to keep her company. According to Brunson’s retelling, not a single parent showed up until 7:58 p.m., and “I was livid,” as she told Trevor Noah

In that moment, “I saw what I wanted to work on for the next however many years I’m able to,” Brunson told Noah.

Over crostinis at a Mediterranean restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, I ask Brunson to clarify: When did she know she wanted to do a mockumentary-style sitcom? Was that revelation instantaneous? “That was just as instant,” she confirms. “I credit it to…how I was viewing my mom in the moment. I was sitting at my mom’s desk, watching her have this parent-teacher moment and I was like, I want the audience member to feel like they’re [here]. To feel the warmth of the classroom. That observant state I had with her made me want to make a mockumentary immediately.”

Brunson agrees that Abbott Elementary, tonally, lives somewhere between The Office and Parks and Recreation, two other stalwarts of the network sitcom genre. Yet she wanted her comedy to live on a network not so she could create a version of “The Office for teachers,” but, perhaps ironically, because she so deftly understood the internet era and its shortcomings. In spite of its dinosaur reputation, network television could still reach an audience that streaming alone couldn’t. As streaming services like Netflix and Hulu have grown increasingly niche and trend-beholden, network television could still reach “a white grandma in Wichita,” Brunson posits.

Liliane Lathan

Brunson, who dropped out of Temple University's advertising program to explore comedy, has been honing the craft of universal appeal since her early meme days. Thus why the internet’s increasingly algorithm-led approach frustrates her. In spite of what fans might assume about the author of a book called She Memes Well, Brunson admits she “can’t get with” TikTok. “Everything is presented to you right away,” she says. “In the old days of the internet, it was all about discovery; it was all about YouTube diving.” She sharpened her get-discovered skills while at BuzzFeed, where mass-market relatability was a fine art before it became a corporate benchmark. “BuzzFeed really had that down to a science.”

This approach led Williams to become a fan of Brunson’s long before he joined the Abbott cast. “There was something about the way she handled the internet space that was different than everyone else,” he says. “It wasn’t as quick, like bang of a laugh she was looking for. You could tell these were thought-out things. She knew how to get [videos] done very quickly, but they weren’t just about trendy topics. You know what I mean?” He later adds, “[Abbott] has reflected her internet career and the way it is viral in that way.”

Still, Brunson’s not without her criticisms of the “relatable” approach. Too often, “relatable” has become shorthand for “relatable to a white audience.” With Abbott, she wanted to test her hypothesis: that the supposed white grandma in Wichita would love her majority-Black cast just as much as Brunson’s family back home in Philadelphia did.

Since Abbott became ABC’s first comedy to quadruple its premiere ratings since its debut, Brunson’s been credited with having “single-handedly [made] network TV worth watching again,” but she tends to brush off this suggestion. In her opinion, it’s not that network TV stopped being cool; it’s that networks finally realized—or, perhaps, admitted—their audiences like and watch shows like Insecure or Atlanta, made by Black creators whom Brunson considers her friends and contemporaries.

“It was so hard to get executives to understand what you were talking about, so it became easier for millennial [television writers and creators] to veer toward streaming, where they had more freedom,” Brunson says. “Now, the network executives get it. And it's nice to have a point of reference. Even though Abbott is nothing like Insecure or Atlanta, it's just nice to have a point of reference for [executives], like, ‘Okay this can work.’”

Once a sitcom staple in Everybody Hates Chris, Williams admits he’d been waiting on a show like Abbott to dispel his festering disillusionment around primetime comedy. What finally convinced him was Brunson’s script; it was the first he’d read in years that actually made him laugh. “When a sitcom works, there’s nothing better,” he says. “It’s what American culture and TV was built on. So I don’t think the sitcom can ever die; it just has to periodically be revitalized. And Quinta seemed able to revitalize it with Abbott.”

Jonny Marlow

In an era where method acting regularly makes headlines and chaotic production dynamics seem increasingly ubiquitous, Abbott Elementary might be home to one of the healthiest sets on television. Part of that, of course, is thanks to its format: A mockumentary approach means fewer takes, which translates to everyone getting to go home earlier. But shorter working hours can’t fully encapsulate why, as both Brunson and Williams confirm, the majority of both the cast and crew is set to return for Abbott’s (already highly anticipated) second season. There’s a synergy Brunson has built on the Warner Brothers lot where Abbott films that sparks real-life joy; it’s why even the students who know her real name is “Quinta” still think of her as Ms. Teagues.

“Quinta, she plans everything,” Walter explains. “There’s nothing that’s an accident, bless her overachieving little heart. I’m telling you flat out: When Quinta went in to pitch the pilot, she knew where season two and three were going.” Brunson’s direction of every component of the show included its cast, each of whom she handpicked for their roles.

As Brunson remembers it, Williams was her first get as the stiff but sweet substitute teacher Gregory, then Walter as Melissa, the tough educator from South Philly. (“Some heavy hitters auditioned, and they were women whom I admire comedically and everything, but when [Lisa] auditioned, she was it,” Brunson says.) Next was stand-up comedian Janelle James as Ava Coleman, an under-qualified principal blending Michael Scott and Keke Palmer’s worst (or, perhaps, best) inclinations; followed by Chris Perfetti as the chronically uncomfortable history teacher Jacob. (“[Perfetti] was the only person who saw this character and found a way to make him fresh and unique,” Brunson says. “In the pilot, Jacob’s the least fleshed-out character; we knew that, with six main characters, somebody’s going to get the short end of the stick, and we figured, Why not the white guy people know already?”)

The last main-ensemble character to earn her role was Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard, an old-school kindergarten teacher inspired by Brunson’s mother. Brunson had imagined Ralph in the role from the beginning, but schedule conflicts barred her progress. When the actress’s schedule finally opened up, “It was kind of like, ‘Oh God, oh God, we have to get her while the getting is good,’” Brunson says.

When I get Ralph on the phone, she speaks with all the grace and grandeur of her character. “[Quinta] said to me, quite literally, ‘We need a queen for this role, and you are that queen,’” she says.

For Ralph, Abbott represents more than just a massive, ground-breaking hit: It’s a sign that, after she’s spent decades in the acting business (To Sleep With Anger, Sister Act 2, Moesha; she won a Tony for her leading role in Dreamgirls on Broadway), the industry is finally embracing a shift that eclipses network or streaming trends. “Anytime where I’m seeing other young Black women heading up their own shows, or other young Black women with the power to green-light shows, I know that every bit of work I ever did in the beginning [was worth it],” she says. “When the industry was quick to tell me, ‘This isn’t happening for you, and there’s no space for you.’ For me to carry on my own personal good fight, knowing that there would be a place…it was all worth it because I see [Black women] in these positions of power now. I know what I went through to get them there and myself there, too. I am so happy that Quinta and I have arrived at this place together. More than that, she looked back at me and said, ‘Queen, this is for you.’”

Gilles Mingasson

Nor is Ralph the only cast member who feels a protective affection for their fearless leader. “My child, my oldest is older than Quinta,” Walter says. “When I get around [Brunson], I’m always like, ‘Did you eat? Are you resting? Because you’re doing so much. You’re going right from here to the writers’s room. When are you going to take a nap?’ I’m like, she’s my boss! I can’t infantilize her, number one, but also she’s personally capable. I don’t want to make it like, ‘Oh, she’s little; I want to cuddle her.’ You do want to cuddle her because she’s adorable.”

Brunson, to her credit, encourages this dynamic on set and off. She regularly checks in with her co-stars when they’re apart. (Williams rejects her call during the course of our interview, texting her, “Talking about you. Will call you back.”) During production, she sends encouraging notes about their performances at the end of each day, things like, “How did you recreate that genius six times? Now I don’t know which one to pick,” as Walter offers up. The feel-good rhythm of Abbott feels good because it’s real, and the cast and crew trust Brunson to maintain it.

After the season 1 finale aired last night, the pressure is on to keep the momentum alive into season 2. Brunson is faced with the age-old conundrum of the sophomore chapter: how to recreate the magic of the first without tilling exhausted ground. She has a lot of ideas, as do her co-stars: Brunson wants to take more field trips, literally and figuratively, outside of the Abbott Elementary halls; Ralph wants Barbara to start a choir in the vein of Sister Act 2; Walter wants the crew to travel to a teaching convention, except “they can’t afford an expensive one, so it’s, like, Atlantic City.” Williams hopes for more will-they, won't-they romance from Gregory and Janine: “[Gregory’s] got to grow a lot before he’s ready for a relationship, period, let alone with Janine. However, we can see, from the outside point of view, how if they do the work, they could really have something special.”

If any fans are worried over this spitballing approach, rest assured, Brunson has a plan for as many as nine seasons. She’s managed to accomplish virality without acquiescing to the whims of trend, and speak to the issues of the era—race relations, income inequality, teacher pay—without bowing to the instability of the moment. (“When people slip into trend, it’s usually right before they royally fuck themselves,” Williams says.)

Best of all, Brunson’s funny, and she knows it. When she lands a joke, the satisfaction seems almost to settle in her skull, manifesting a subtle glint behind her eyes. She knows where Abbott Elementary is headed, and she’s going to make sure it gets there.

“When I was [first] thinking about Abbott, I thought about a season one and then I thought about a season nine,” she says. “Not that I’m saying it would make it to a season nine because that’s a long way away—I don’t even know if people want [the show] to go to a season nine—but I was like, Where would I like these characters to end up? And I think that, if you know the end of the story, you can do everything you need to do in between to keep it from getting there too soon but still be building up to that.”

The plan is for the writers’s room to start drafting scripts in late April, continue for around 20 weeks, then start filming in July, Brunson confirms. In the meantime, it’s the Abbott kids she misses most.

As she sips her mocktail, Brunson smiles, recalling when the cast filmed the season finale. It was the first time in five months of production that the kids had the opportunity to escape the Warner Brothers lot, and, as expected, they were losing their precious little minds. A new child actor had joined the cast that day for a short speaking role. “The kid’s, like, an actor, a little bit,” Brunson says with a slight wink. When a crew member attempted to quiet the children by asking “all the kids” to raise their hands, the young actor refused, citing that he was “an actor, not a kid.”

Now, Brunson is visibly holding back laughter. “[The other kids], they were like, ‘Okay, but you’re a kid though.’ And he’s like, ‘This isn’t a real school.’ They’re like, ‘Uh, yes it is, we go to Abbott, and it is a real school, and you don’t go here. You’ve never been to our school.’ And I’m watching this little fight and I’m like, ‘Should I intervene?’”

Because the kids actually do schoolwork on the lot, Abbott Elementary is as real to them as any other classroom. That’s fitting for a show named after Brunson’s real-life sixth grade teacher. And Brunson has realized it doesn’t matter what name her kids—or her co-stars, or her audience, or her friends and family back in Philly—call her: Either way, Ms. Teagues knows exactly how to do her job.

Photography by Jonny Marlow; hair by Alexander Armand; makeup by Renee Loiz; styling by Bryon Javar.