When Quinta Brunson (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, age 35) was launched Abbott College almost five years ago he had a clear request. The filming set didn’t just have to recreate a school, it had to do it To be a school Look at it, breathe it. This was the obsession and need of its creator and protagonist; So much so that its very first episode, that 2021 pilot, was taped in a real school, in Los Angeles (though it always feels like it’s Brunson’s hometown, on the other side of the country). But it was too complicated. So, to bring to life the suffering of a half-dozen teachers and hundreds of students, it was decided to create the closest thing to a school at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California. There, in studio 16, built 90 years ago and where they filmed Giant, My Fair Lady, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, Batman Returns, The Perfect Storm OR Wild Wild Westan entire school was set up to recreate the most important thing: true stories that make you laugh out loud.
A few meters beyond that studio 16, in front of the filming trailers for the second season of The PittBrunson and his co-stars reunite to explain how humor and closeness remain their strengths five seasons and nearly 80 episodes later. In fact, it is possible that the union of one and the other enhances both more. This is what Brunson and his colleagues on set say in a relaxed press conference: Lisa Ann Walter (who plays Professor Melissa Schemmenti), Tyler James Williams (Gregory Eddie), Sheryl Lee Ralph (Barbara Howard), William Stanford Davis (Mr. Johnson) and Chris Perfetti (Jacob Hill). Because, as everyone claims, they may not have been teachers, but they, like everyone, have been students and have attended classes at some point in their lives.
“It’s something Lisa used to say when this show started,” Brunson recalled, “when she came on board: ‘Everyone, really, has been taught by a teacher or has been a teacher.’ And it’s true, he may be one of the only things in the world that everyone has a connection with, and that’s a teacher. So we went with that. From the beginning of the show, I wanted to hire writers who appreciated teachers, not who laughed at them or thought they were worthless, but who appreciated them. And it turned out that most of the screenwriters had a teacher in their immediate family or household,” Brunson acknowledged to EL PAIS while sitting at a desk in the Warner Bros. studios.
Every year they chat with professors that she herself seeks out, friends, acquaintances… In fact she reveals that she had a sort of chat with “the real Gregory, in Philadelphia”. So at the beginning of the course they do a video conference with many of them “to hear how they feel, what are the real problems they face…”, says Brunson. Tyler James Williams, who plays Gregory in the ABC series broadcast on Disney+, also says this: “You were very specific in looking for writers who wrote from the heart,” he reminds Brunson. “I think that’s the key to any version of empathy or good storytelling. If you go into it with your heart, you’ll be able to connect with anyone else who has access to their heart on the other side.”
“As long as that’s the focus,” the actor reiterates, “I think a lot of different stories can be told through that prism, but I also think we get into that realm where we not only tell the story of some teachers, but we love them as we tell it and we don’t belittle them, but we try to have fun with a difficult situation.”
That authentic vision, without ridicule or humiliation, is essential for the plots, the writers and the actors, even if the tone of the series is comical and they themselves, as they say, laugh when they see themselves on the screen, months after filming the situations and jokes they recorded months ago. This is not at odds with giving real voice to teachers’ stories. “I think that this way we take a new perspective of what happens, an authentic perspective of what affects them, and try to take advantage of it. But always keeping in mind that we are not making a drama,” he emphasizes. “We’re making a comedy, so even though some of the realities are going to be harsh and, yes, real, we have to make sure we take material that we can have fun with and recreate an entire experience. We don’t want you to go home and look at what you went through during the day and feel sad, so we added a little fictional fun to make sure it’s still a comedy.”
Walters, known to 90s kids for her role as a nanny You in London and me in Californiawith Lindsay Lohan — that her mother was a public school teacher in Washington, D.C., and had in fact taught her herself, and how she remembers absorbing her stories. “He loved his children and would fight and kill for them,” the actress fondly recalled. “But she didn’t take nonsense from anyone either. So, to anyone who thought she might be making fun of her, she made it clear very quickly… and those were my friends. So it was crazy. But she went to bed early, so we were all still partying at my house.”
The diversity of the teaching staff is well reflected in the series. There are men and women of all colours, ages and backgrounds. “For me the point is that you don’t have to look like us to love us or to appreciate us in our entirety as a class, as a cast,” explains Sheryl Lee Ralph, a four-time Emmy nominee and 2022 winner, for her role as a veteran school teacher. She was the first black woman to win the statuette in more than 35 years. “Also, it’s the fact that, again, it’s a global effect, people connect with showwith other people. It’s not about connecting with color, but with people, and for us this makes the difference.”
For Brunson, diversity is inevitable in this case. “I think the better the stories, the more diversity you will naturally have,” says the creator. “Now, we will always need our industry to value the stories of people of color, not dismiss them because they come from people of color. A good story is a good story.”
