Dispatch • The 'Abbott Elementary' Cast on Five Seasons of Making Hard Work Look Easy
At an ABC panel on May 31, Quinta Brunson and her cast reflected on the comedy’s fifth season and its beloved characters
(Abbott Elementary stars Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Quinta Brunson, Tyler James Williams, William Stanford Davis, and Lisa Ann Walter. Source: Disney / Sami Drasin)
Five seasons in, Abbott Elementary is still the best-run school on television, which says something, given that Ava Coleman (Janelle James) remains in charge. Created by Quinta Brunson and now deep into its run on ABC, the mockumentary follows the dedicated, underfunded, and endlessly lovable staff of Willard R. Abbott Public School in Philadelphia, a group that has become as familiar as any ensemble on television. The show premiered in 2021, quickly became one of network TV’s rare modern comedy breakouts, went on to win four Emmys, and has done little since to suggest the goodwill was misplaced.
At an ABC FYC panel for Abbott Elementary in Los Angeles on May 31, Variety Chief Awards Editor Clayton Davis moderated a discussion with Brunson and the cast to reflect on the most recent season. Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, and William Stanford Davis were in the room, with Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lisa Ann Walter joining virtually. The panel moved less like a formal event and more like a joke-riffing faculty lounge chat with microphones.
That felt appropriate. Abbott Elementary has always been a workplace comedy about work, but also about the small daily exchanges that keep people showing up: friendship, pride, exhaustion, duty, and the stubborn belief that a difficult, underpaying job can still be worth doing well.
(The Season 5 trailer for Abbott Elementary. Source: Disney / YouTube)
This season tested one of the show’s most beloved relationships: Janine Teagues (Brunson) and Gregory Eddie (Williams). After years of will-they-won’t-they tension and a period of dating, the couple hit their first real rough patch while planning a getaway in the Season 5 episode “Trip,” fighting over money, transportation, and destination.
“It was just time,” Brunson said of the decision to stress test the relationship. The writers wanted to throw a “stone at the rock” of Janine and Gregory’s romance before letting them move forward. “People were very upset to see one of their favorite couples have a tiff. I like to make people feel things, and so that’s why we went that route.”
Williams said the argument made sense to him because Gregory wasn’t simply being stubborn or cheap. “They were fighting over their future,” Williams said. Janine was thinking about “quality of life,” while Gregory was trying to figure out how he would help “provide” for the relationship. “Every couple I know right now is having that argument because we live in a very specific world financially,” he added.
(Sheryl Lee Ralph, Lisa Ann Walter, Quinta Brunson, Janelle James, and Chris Perfetti in Abbott Elementary. Source: Disney / Gilles Mingasson)
By the finale, Janine and Gregory had found their way back to each other. Gregory also ended the season promoted to vice principal, with thoughts of proposing hovering in the background. And if Janine and Gregory carried the season’s romantic anxiety, Ava remained one of its great comic sparks. Across five seasons, James has turned Ava into one of television’s sharpest sources of chaos: self-interested, shameless, occasionally competent by accident, and somehow exactly the principal Abbott deserves.
This season deepened Ava’s relationship with O’Shon (Matthew Law), the school district’s IT rep, and gave her, perhaps more surprisingly, a stake in Janine and Gregory’s relationship. James was quick to clarify Ava’s motives. “She less cares about them and more cares about messing up the vibes of the school and the social circle that she’s become a part of,” she explained.
After five seasons, playing Ava now feels second nature to James. “I’m in cruise control now,” she said. “I feel like I know her.” Later, she spoke more seriously about what the character has come to mean, especially to Black women who have told her Ava makes them feel confident and seen. “I realized that my role in this character is so important to so many people,” James said.
Mr. Johnson (Davis) also found a love interest this season with Miss Carroll (Khandi Alexander), a fellow custodian he met during the school’s temporary mall relocation. “Everybody’s in a relationship, and it was about time for him to have one,” he said. He thought a producer was joking when she first told him. Then he read the script. “It had a lot of heart to it,” he said, before adding, “Mr. Johnson, you know, he’s a player.”
(Quinta Brunson, William Stanford Davis, and Tyler James Williams in Abbott Elementary. Source: Disney / Gilles Mingasson)
This season also gave viewers a deeper look at Jacob (Perfetti), expanding on the Season 4 introduction of his younger brother Caleb (Tyler Tomás Perez). “I was just like a kid in a candy store this year,” Perfetti said. Caleb’s arrival helped clarify how much Jacob had run from one family situation and found another at Abbott, while the season also let him show a more settled side of the character. “He won, he won a little bit this year,” Perfetti added. “I like seeing Jacob happy.”
Walter, meanwhile, spoke about Melissa’s world growing over time. When the show began, Melissa’s life at Abbott was largely about doing the work and then returning to her own chaotic orbit. But across five seasons, her world came to include her younger colleagues, their siblings, their partners, and a larger sense of chosen family. “The world at Abbott for Melissa has gotten bigger and fuller and more connected and filled with love,” she explained.
When discussing her character Barbara, Ralph did so with the kind of respect of someone who takes real teachers seriously. She cited a teacher she knows who considered retirement many times but kept returning because every year she saw the children grow and felt she wasn’t finished. “I want to embody that spirit of the woman, the educator who keeps carrying on,” Ralph said. “When you’re an artist, you love what you do, so you keep right on doing it.”
(Tyler James Williams, Quinta Brunson, Janelle James, Lisa Ann Walter, and Chris Perfetti in Abbott Elementary. Source: Disney / Gilles Mingasson)
Abbott Elementary has a reputation for knowing exactly how to use a guest star, from Taraji P. Henson and Ayo Edebiri to Bradley Cooper, Keegan-Michael Key, and Questlove. The question of who might drop by next produced one of the evening’s more memorable exchanges. Clayton Davis told a story about James at the Critics Choice Awards, seated near Leonardo DiCaprio and playfully making the case for him to appear on the show. (“Yo, Leo, come to television, you’ll like it over here!” Davis recalled.) DiCaprio smiled, Davis said, taking the moment in stride.
Brunson took the question in a different direction. For her, the dream “get” last season wasn’t a movie star; it was actually featuring James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash for a watch party in the Season 5 episode “Night Out”—a feat that required more legwork than viewers might have guessed, including conversations that eventually reached Cameron’s orbit. Brunson contended that Avatar remains the “last piece of monoculture.” Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber, meanwhile, appeared earlier in the season, and the timing worked out almost too well. He hit four home runs that day. “We couldn’t have predicted that, but he was wonderful,” Brunson said.
Her casting philosophy is simple: the character comes first. Famous names can work against a mockumentary if they pull viewers out of the world. What excites Brunson more is finding performers who fit Abbott Elementary and, when possible, introducing audiences to someone new. She pointed to James herself, a working stand-up comic whom many TV viewers had never seen act before Abbott. “It was more exciting to me to show you someone new. Same thing with Chris [Perfetti],” Brunson said.
Near the end of the panel, the conversation turned toward the work itself. Brunson offered a gentle reminder that making a 22-episode network season is no small undertaking. Unlike many streaming shows, which can pause for a particular actor, song, or schedule, Abbott Elementary has to begin filming in August and be on television by October. That pace, she suggested, requires a level of commitment that can be easy to overlook.
(William Stanford Davis, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Lisa Ann Walter in Abbott Elementary. Source: Disney / Gilles Mingasson)
“I used to undersell the hard work that we do on this show,” she said. “I’m not doing that anymore, because for us to do 22 [episodes] to be any semblance of good whatsoever, we have to come in and care.” Then she reached for a comparison that feels especially right for Abbott. “It’s like preparing a meal for your family,” she said. “We are taking our time to still try to make good, impactful work that is funny, that is poignant, that helps talk about what teachers are going through in this country, what minority groups are going through in this country.”
Walter seconded that from her own experience. Teachers stop her at the stage door to say what the show means to them, but so do viewers who have absorbed its messages about education and equity without feeling lectured. “They have a stealth way of making such an impact,” Walter said. “The community is telling me, and I feel it too.”
As for Season 6, Brunson offered a brief tease. Gregory’s promotion to vice principal means he’ll be working more closely with Ava. “Use your imagination,” she joked, as the room laughed. The writers’ room was set to open the next day, and Brunson said she had material she hadn’t told the cast about yet.
That sense of possibility made for a fitting final note for a show that makes difficult work look effortless. Five seasons in, Abbott Elementary still moves with the ease of people who know one another well, but the panel made clear just how much goes into creating that feeling onscreen. The show, as Brunson put it earlier, is like preparing a family meal: made quickly and under pressure, but served with warmth and grace. Week after week, Abbott Elementary thankfully keeps setting the table.
Seasons 1-5 of Abbott Elementary are available to stream on Hulu.