ButQuinta Brunsonhas succeeded where many not namedChuck Lorrehave failed.
“Our entire crew from the PAs to the COVID team were like, ‘This show is good.
We’re having a good time.'”
Quinta Brunson on the ABC sitcom ‘Abbott Elementary.'.ABC/Liliane Lathan
The sitcom’s setting is deeply familiar to its star, a Philly native whose mother taught kindergarten.
“I realize that everybody doesn’t have the same relationship to school that I had.
Although she was there as a dancer, the program left room to try other disciplines.
Lisa Ann Walter, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Quinta Brunson, Chris Perfetti, and Tyler James Williams on ‘Abbott Elementary.'.Gilles Mingasson/abc
“I got to be an understudy Rizzo inGreaseone year,” she remembers.
It’s like, ‘I might really want to pursue this one day.'”
Brunson says she was “a fantastic student.
Behind the scenes of ABC’s ‘Abbott Elementary’ with Quinta Brunson.Gilles Mingasson/abc
But BuzzFeed was never her endgame.
She quickly booked a role on a CW dramedy pilot from showrunners Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker.
Then, by chance, Brunson ran into Schumacker on the Warner Bros. lot right before the pandemic started.
Quinta Brunson on ‘Abbott Elementary.'.Gilles Mingasson/abc
“He was like, ‘Hey, remember the idea you had a while ago about the teacher show?
We really like that idea.
We should give a shot to do that,'” she recalls.
“I loved Norman Lear’s comedies,” says Brunson.
“So just me as a fan was like, ‘Oh, that’s super tight.’
I knew that we would, from that, have a certain comedy audience come to our show.”
And she was right.
Almost 3 million people watchedAbbott Elementarythat night.
(Like, actually on Dec. 7, not on their DVR later that week or on Hulu).
Almost a million more tuned in when episode 2 aired in early January and those impressive ratings have sustained.
Brunson says that the best part of creating the show has been the world-building.
That feeds into her favorite part of acting on the show, which is working with her cast.
Like the teachers on her show, providing to the underserved is an important part of her work.
Because I think everyone deserves to watch good TV.”
A version of this story appears in the March issue ofEntertainment Weekly, on newsstands Feb. 18.
