“How do we justify losing half a season, half a year?”
This was one of the questions asked by Quinta Brunson as she headed back into the writers room for Abbott Elementary Season 3, following the end of the WGA strike. The puzzle she’s had to confront is how to address a substantial time jump in the context of a mockumentary intricately connected to the yearly calendar of an elementary school. “Our season will still be on the school calendar. [But] last year, we started airing in September, when school started. We’re not doing that this year,” said the ABC/Warner Bros. TV sitcom’s creator, co-showrunner, executive producer, writer and star. “It’s not like coming back to a family show where you can pop in on that family on any sitcom-y thing. It’s really like, what’s going on in the school?”
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Brunson caught up with Deadline while at Thursday evening’s fall benefit for Ghetto Film School, the award-winning non-profit founded in 2000 to educate and develop the next generation of great storytellers from all backgrounds. She was an honoree at the event, which took place at Brian and Veronica Grazer’s home in Los Angeles, and was recognized for her inspirational work as an artist, alongside The Color Purple‘s Danielle Brooks and Killing Eve‘s Sandra Oh.
With the WGA strike just recently in the rearview mirror, the SAG-AFTRA strike still to be resolved, and the rush to create a new season of television before her, Brunson chooses to embrace “the bright side” for her show in the challenge before her — the “little bit of creativity” that came from being forced to make different choices in her storytelling.
‘Abbott Elementary’ Season 3 Update
In conversation with Deadline, Brunson also confirmed that Abbott‘s forthcoming season will have “fewer episodes” than the last one “because of the strike, and because of the airing schedule, because of what ABC has room for on their schedule.” But she’s “not complaining,” she admitted. “We did 22 last season, and that’s a lot of TV, in particular for me because I’m writing and producing and starring in it,” she said. “So for me, I welcomed a shorter season because it was tiring, exhausting work. Love it, but exhausting for me.”
While Abbott‘s S3 writers room was supposed to open May 1st, that wound up being the day the writers strike was set in motion, meaning that when Brunson and her team finally did go back to work on Monday of last week, they were essentially starting from scratch. But “my room was ready to go back,” said Brunson, who was in London when news emerged that the AMPTP and WGA had reached a deal. “I was ready to go back.”
The process kicked off, as it always does, with the breaking of the season’s arc. “Talking about that arc helps us start to put together episodes. So we talk about our arc, talk about the stories we want to tell, the special, unique, funny stories that can fall within that arc,” said Brunson. “We talked about our premiere, which I’m trying not to spoil. That became the focus of the past two weeks.”
With the premiere, she said, the team has “a lot of heavy lifting to do,” as far as “explaining our absence…in a way that we think engages the audience, protects the world we built.” The hope, of course, is to bring back the audience and energy around a series, which is one of linear TV’s most popular, even after being off the air for a long time. “So that felt inspiring,” Brunson said, “to build something that was both grounded, and for this premiere, splashy enough to bring people back at the same time.”
Getting Back In Business With Studios Post-Strike
Last night, Brunson explained that one of the highlights of the strike period for her was a “WGA party” she put on with the Studio City restaurant Black Market Liquor, a “wonderful” event which offered free food and drinks to members of the union, and attracted a large turnout. But in the rest of her time available while not on the picket lines, she made an effort to get her “mind and health and body” together. “Because for me, the past two years have been a whirlwind, and for everything that everyone saw, like the show airing and award shows, et cetera, we also were head down, deep in making the show,” said Brunson. “So for me, it was the first time I got to pull my head above water, so to speak, and I took that time to look around for the first time and see what we had achieved with Abbott, and what personally I had achieved. Because I’m not sure it was quite processing while it was happening.”
In terms of aftereffects of the strikes, Brunson expects to see a heightened sense of camaraderie and community amongst members of the WGA, as well as those in SAG-AFTRA and all those who joined the writers in their fight. A pressing question, as the WGA Strike has wrapped up, is whether tensions will linger between members of the union and those on the studio/streamer side. But if the experiences Brunson recounted are any indication, this may not be the case, at least not uniformly. “Look, most people are really just happy to get back to work and to feel respected at work,” she said. “Strikes suck. They’re hard. People hurl insults at each other. It gets nasty. But once it’s done, it really feels like both sides are happy with what they accomplished. I know I feel that way with Warner Bros.”
After “months of not talking to executives that I work with all the time, who I trust,” she said, “it feels they are happy for what was accomplished by the WGA. We’re happy to be back in the room again. So, in a way, it feels like both sides feel like they accomplished something, and that’s really rewarding.”
Fears For Cinematic Arts’ Future In Era Of TikTok
In her Ghetto Film School acceptance speech, Brunson again spoke to all the time she spent with her “head down working,” trying to find her way in entertainment, as someone who studied advertising in school, but always had “this little secret kind of fling” with film and television going on in the background of her life. Her background as someone who once saw no clear path to break in, without parental support or a mentor to show her the ropes, informs her appreciation of institutions like Ghetto Film School, which offer people with similar trajectories “a space where they can pursue their dreams.” That place, for her, was Second City in Chicago, where a teacher made it clear that she was not only a gifted performer, but a natural writer, as well — giving her $500 out of her own pocket so that she could attend a writing class, which changed her life.
After discussing her film school experience of sorts at the now defunct BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, Brunson got candid — through humor — about her worries for the future, and for kids. “You know, I see the Tik and the Tok, and I get really scared. I worry that there aren’t places where people are honing in on their crafts anymore. And I say this as a child of the internet,” Brunson shared. “I’m a YouTube, Instagram kid, but now I really worry if there are places that young people can go where they get to learn about and care about their craft. And coming here tonight, probably after I went on like my 10th rant in the writers room about how TikTok is ruining art, it’s nice to come here and see you guys and know that the future is in very good hands, and know that there are people who are honing in on their craft.”
Equally gratifying was knowing that the students before her at the benefit have a community supporting them, financially and otherwise. “Do you know how tight that is?” she asked. “Super f**king tight.”
Brunson went on to say that “as someone who’s looking to start the philanthropy leg of my career, this is the kind of place that I want to support. This is where I want to put my money. It’s where I want to put my efforts. I want to make sure that the creators of tomorrow are fully funded and fully supported. So I want to thank Ghetto Film School for existing and also giving me this honor. I do not take it for granted.”
Centered on Brunson’s ever-optimistic second-grade teacher Janine Teagues, her series Abbott Elementary follows a group of educators brought together in one of the worst public schools in the country, simply because they love teaching. The show, a critical darling and ratings hit across both linear and streaming since its December 2021 debut, was renewed for its third season in January and wrapped up its second in April.
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