The strike may have delayed and abbreviated the third season of Abbott Elementary but Quinta Brunson went into it feeling pretty confident that her comedy wasn’t going anywhere: she was told that ABC had picked up the series for a fourth season.
While appearing at Deadline’s Contenders TV on Sunday, Brunson — who was joined on stage by Tyler James Williams (Gregory), Chris Perfetti (Jacob) and William Stanford Davis (Mr. Johnson) — recalled how incredible it felt to know that “ABC trusted us” before they even began production on season 3.
The news of the pickup was made public in February at the Television Critics Associaton press tour.
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The comedy just wrapped production last week on the third season. Brunson, who plays Janine in the comedy that she created for ABC, said she still marvels at how far her Emmy-winning comedy has come.
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“We filmed the pilot episode in a school in West Adams,” she said of the south Los Angeles neighborhood where they shot back in 2021. “To go from having to use these real classrooms to have multiple corners of the WB lot, it’s wild to see where we are now.”
“When we shot the pilot … I turned to Sheryl Lee Ralph and said, ‘you feel that don’t you?” continued Williams. “There was already a sense that we were on the precipice of something special. It speaks to how TV affects people in their lives. We couldn’t anticipate this growth even in our wildest dreams.”
Brunson also addressed the show’s embarrassment of riches when it comes to all the people who have reached out wanting to guest star on the comedy.
“Jalen Hurts reached out multiple times,” Brunson said of the Eagles quarterback. “We were like, ‘ok, alright.’ But we were doing the second season. We didn’t have anything for him that felt organic. For the season 3 premiere, I wanted something special and the Eagles are very special to me,. So we were like, let’s write Jalen this part.”
She had a similar reaction when she heard that Bradley Cooper wanted to do the show. “I was like wait, we have Bradley Cooper? What do we do with Bradley Cooper?” Brunson continued. “Bradley was incredible. We talked for weeks leading up to his appearance about what he could do. He’s a Philly boy, so it’s not far fetched that he would be in the neighborhood. It would have felt weird if he came and played a character. He’s a movie star. He looks like one and talks like one. It was better for him to play himself.
Brunson recently took home the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Season 2. The series also stars Janelle James as Ava Coleman, Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti, and Emmy Award winner Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard.
Brunson, alongside Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker of Delicious Non-Sequitur Productions, Randall Einhorn and Brian Rubenstein serve as executive producers.
Check back Monday for the panel video.
