How do you craft a crowd-pleaser like Abbott Elementary? Over four seasons, Quinta Brunson’s mockumentary sitcom has been a commercial and critical hit, lauded for both its depiction of the always wacky, sometimes dysfunctional, ultimately affectionate relationships between the employees at the series’ titular Philadelphia school and its open-armed approach to the series’ young actors, guest stars, and consulting schoolteachers and administrators. Abbott is simultaneously warm and pointed, a reflection of Brunson’s desire to make a show that numerous generations could watch and laugh at together, and a gentle rebuke of the myriad pressures put upon public-school employees.
Story lines about the school district’s lean funding live alongside Janine and Gregory’s long-simmering romance; a cold-open gag involving the PTA breaking into the line dance from Wild Wild West rubs shoulders with a season-four arc about the real impact of gentrification on Abbott’s parents and students. The series is always sprightly in its ability to fuse real-world concerns with Abbott’s own peculiar internal dynamics. That agility is thanks to its writers, who are the first winners of Vulture’s Roomy Award.
And the winners are ...
The Writers of Abbott Elementary
Recipients of Vulture's Inaugural Roomy Award
In recognition of the superlative television writing produced by: Quinta Brunson, Megan Carroll, Ava Coleman, Lizzy Darrell, Riley Dufurrena, Justin Halpern, Joya McCrory, Chad Morton, Morgan Murphy, Brittani Nichols, Kate Peterman, Rebekka Pesqueira, Brian Rubenstein, Patrick Schumacker, Justin Tan, Jordan Temple, and Garrett Werner.
During a conversation and awards presentation at Vulture Fest in Los Angeles last month, creator and star Quinta Brunson and most of the series’ writers’ room discussed how they break a season with ideas from their own lives and conversations with actual Philadelphia school-system employees, the on-set tweaks to some of the series’ most beloved episodes, their upcoming crossover with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and their dream to get Mr. Johnson on The Golden Bachelor.
Since I want to learn all about your process, the logical first question is: How do you start? Quinta, you’ve said you go into each season having broad story beats —how does that play out as a collaboration with the rest of the room?
Quinta Brunson: Before the season starts, I do have an idea of what I want the season to look like. And what I usually do is call Justin [Halpern]. He and Pat [Schumacker] are my co-producers, and we talk about the ideas. This was actually the first season that I didn’t have a layout from the first episode to the last episode, which feels good, honestly. I feel like it’s a sign that our room is in a very good place. Most of us have been here since the first season. This is the first year I’ve felt comfortable being like, “I don’t know what episode 22 is gonna look like, but I feel like we can decide that together in the room.â€
After that, we start the room and do blue-sky ideas. We talk about what we did last season, what we see for each of the characters, what kind of stories we want to tell. And that’s not always a big thing — it’s like, “I’d like to do this with Melissa this year, or this with Janine, or this with Gregory.†It helps lead us to story lines.
We usually have a conversation with someone from the school district — educators and administrators — to make sure what we’re talking about isn’t completely wrong. We are a comedy, so we don’t have to get it exactly right, and I like to reserve that right for us to work in fiction. But we like to talk to an administrator to kick things off. Am I missing anything?
Justin Halpern: No, that’s largely how it goes. We talk about where we think our characters were when we left them off and where we want to see them by the end of the season. It’s also sort of the safe space to pitch whatever you want at that time. It all goes into a big document that we frequently check back in on at certain times during the season.
For everybody else on this stage, are you coming in with A-plot ideas, B-plot ideas, sight gags? I’m curious how you all approach the beginning of a season.
Q.B.: Somebody get in there. I’m gonna start calling on people. You want me to do that? All right, fine. Kate!
Kate Peterman: Can you repeat the question?
[Laughter.]
J.H.: You just got the absolute essence of Kate right there.
K.P.: Since season one, I’ve come in with one idea every single season, and it is an idea that keeps getting shot down. I’m not gonna say it!
I feel like you have to say it.
J.H.: It doesn’t make any sense.
Q.B.: Actually, Brittani, do you want to go for it?
K.P.: I’m gonna hand it over to Brittani!
Brittani Nichols: I’ll pass it to Ava.
Ava Coleman: Well, I just come into the room excited to hear what the bosses think we should do.
Excellent answer.
A.C.: No, I’m so serious. Because that’s when the gears start turning, you know what I mean? Because break is break, so I’m relaxing when we’re off; I’m not using my brain. So the first day back, I’m like, Turn it back on! And then I listen, and then we have a lot of fun.
K.P.: A lot of times, I’ll come in fully giving out what happened to my family, or funny things that have happened to me or my family, and then it usually jogs something in other people, and that’s kind of where we build off of that, to give you an actual answer. And then sometimes the ideas get shot down! Like really good ideas, like a cold-open idea!
Apparently really good ideas!
Q.B.: When I say “balloon friends,†what does that mean to you?
[To the audience] Anyone?
Q.B.: You see the empty faces? Nobody’s responding to that —
K.P.: Yet!
Q.B.: “Balloon friends†is not a thing.
When I spoke with the What We Do in the Shadows writers’ room last year, they talked about ideas they have up on note cards. When the season ends and an idea doesn’t get used, they keep it in their back pocket. Do you have any of those you’d be willing to share with us?
Q.B.: I don’t want to run my mouth off too much, but for instance, we had a whole episode this year that — for me, at least — has been on a note card since season one, which is the “Dad Fight†episode. We finally got around to it, and that was the episode that Justin [Tan] directed and Ava wrote.
A.C.: “Dad Fight†was super fun, and yeah, we had been talking about it for a while, so I was excited that it landed on my desk. It was really fun working with a writer who is also a director on our show, Justin Tan. That was a new experience for me. We had a fun guest cast as well. It seems like such a crazy story, but so many people relate. It happens to teachers a lot. Parenting is hard and teaching is hard, and you can find common ground through the struggles. But it’s competitive and it’s hard to keep a child’s attention. I feel like it was a really grounded story that we got to have a lot of fun with.
Q.B.: You ate that.
So things are happening to you guys in real life that come into the show and then you’re meeting with administrators to get ideas from them.
Q.B.: We don’t get ideas from them. It’s important to have that clarity, because it’s important for writers to know that, period. We check with them to make sure that we are executing it in a way that is somewhat accurate, you know?
J.H.: Yeah, we want to know what’s going on in the world of teaching at the moment; we’re not like, “Hey, give us our story ideas.â€
Q.B.: That’s a really important distinction. Most shows that are about a real environment — hospital shows, etc. — they are not going and mining. You make the story, and then you check in. We’re pretty character-first, so we want our characters to do things, and then we’ll find out later if it’s okay.
J.H.: But yeah, things are based off of people’s lives. Gregory doesn’t like food — Brian [Rubenstein] doesn’t like food! That came from Brian!
Q.B.: A fun fact is that Brian doesn’t like food at all. We had that in the script, and the network said, “We think it’s a little weird that Gregory just wouldn’t like food at all. Is he a psychopath?â€
K.P.: “He’s just so unlikable!â€
Brian Rubenstein: They said, “No woman would like this guy.â€
Q.B.: So we had to make it, “Gregory doesn’t like pizza,†which made them feel better, but it was supposed to be representation for Brian.
J.H.: Every notes call, they’d be like, “He seems like a freak show if he doesn’t like food!†It made me so happy, because I’d stare at Brian during the calls.
Jordan Temple: I went to a small, private middle school, and it was all broke Black and brown kids. Then one day out of nowhere, a white kid came to the school. So one day last season, I said, “How about a white kid comes to Abbott?†I didn’t think it would happen, but Quinta was like, “Yes, we’re doing that!â€
Q.B.: We talked about it for season three, but we were like, “Nah,†and it made for the perfect cold open for this season.
When there are story lines that are inspired by things that are actually happening, like the golf course, how do you find the line of echoing what is actually happening and then putting the Abbott spin on it? Are there guardrails for This is too accurate or This is too wacky?
K.P.: I think a lot of times people can get confused between what is fiction and what is nonfiction, and this is a fictional show, so as long as gravity still exists, we’re still following those rules. It’s whatever serves the characters and the stories, and rationalizing whatever decisions make the most entertaining sense for the episode.
So the reality is that the creation of a golf course affects the neighborhood and the community in various ways, but the reality might not be “and they’re bribing teachers.†Although maybe — who can say?!
Q.B.: Who can say? That’s the fun of fiction that’s nice to keep alive here, and the fun of a sitcom. It’s not real life. It’s not a documentary. It’s just fun. Writers should always leave themselves the liberty to just make fiction, and if we want to go wacky, we do! We have had wacky things, and it’s fun too, because those push the limits of what we can do. Like last season, we did the drug episode. What’s it called?
P.S.: “Smoking.†Jordan’s episode.
Q.B.: That, to me, pushed the limits of what we could get away with, so now we can get away with way more this season. The first season, when we even brought Tariq in, that pushed the limits of what we were capable of.
You’re doing writing in the room, but something that came up during the strikes last year is that it’s also important to have a writer on set when episodes are being filmed. Are there any anecdotes you can share about how that works in the world of Abbott?
A.C.: I worked on a show before Abbott that was a great experience, but it was during peak COVID, so it filmed in New York, and I wasn’t able to ever go on the set. That was really hard, because there is something about being in person, getting to talk to the actors, being flexible and having alts and punching up jokes on the fly, and just being there and seeing how the show is actually made.
J.T.: It was the same for me. During peak COVID, I wrote an episode of Atlanta, and I couldn’t go on set, and it was in New York where I’m from, and I was so sad. The benefit of being on set, like Ava was saying, is being able to enjoy the process and see everything from the writers’ room, to ideas you have, to having the script yourself, and then seeing how you can be more engaged. You can kind of take it down the line, and it’s very satisfying.
P.S.: One of the unique things about having a show where it’s broadcast and we’re airing episodes as we’re writing them and cutting them is that it’s this beautiful ecosystem that’s like a training ground for future showrunners — which all these guys could be. So giving the writers an opportunity to produce and see their episode all the way through post and see how the sausage is made? That’s a really cool thing about this show.
Q.B.: You make a really good point about how we’re filming and editing at the same time. We finished 11, we’re between 11 and 12, 15 is being written, 16’s being outlined, we just edited 10, all those things are happening at the same time. And it’s helpful when a writer is there all the way through, because they can keep track of minutiae-like changes that might affect something that’s coming up in an episode two weeks later, or something that is in an outline for five weeks later. That’s the benefit I see. I love that our room is able to keep track of the little teeny things that really matter when you’re airing at the same time that you’re shooting.
K.P.: This happens to me a lot: I’ll have something that I’m confident will play well on its feet; then, when you’re actually filming and it doesn’t, or something gets weird, or humans aren’t able to do what is written on the page, you sometimes have to switch it in the moment. There was something that happened in 308, which was my episode last season, where we basically had to move a talking head around to justify the story. So it’s important for writers to be on set to help the story, and also, it’s so helpful for us to know, like, Okay, I won’t do that idea again.
Here’s the first clip from season two’s “Candy Zombies.†One of the benefits of you having 22-episode seasons is that we get these holiday episodes. Is there a special way you guys approach those in the room? Do you pick certain holidays per season to focus on?
Q.B.: Oh my God, I wish we could do that! No, we get an airing schedule at the beginning of the year. I’d love to do a Thanksgiving episode, but we have not gotten Thanksgiving on the schedule yet. When we find out that we have an episode that’s close to Halloween, or Valentine’s Day, or Christmas, that’s when we know what kind of holiday episode we can do. It’s fun; I’m a huge fan. It’s one of the beautiful things of network TV — airing around a date, as opposed to a binge when you’re airing all at once. It’s nice to know we’re airing at a time and put people in the festive holiday spirit. That episode is actually one of our wackier episodes by one of our wackier writers.
J.H.: That was one of the hardest episodes to break. A real challenge.
K.P.: That was another example of when things change in the edit. Originally, in the script, when all of the kids were running out of their classrooms, we had the act break on the little girl dressed as a dinosaur.
Q.B.: That’s right!
K.P.: God love her. I feel bad that she didn’t get it. She was supposed to run up and go “AHHHH!†into the camera. But it just didn’t work out, so we lost that, and it was one continuous scene.
Q.B.: Our kid who was originally dressed as Mr. Johnson got sick and had to come out — Malcolm.
K.P.: He was so cute!
Q.B.: He was so cute, and it was so sad. He was trying so hard. He was like, “I have a headache and I’m sniffling and I can’t see straight, but I’m gonna do this!’
K.P.: “I’m dealing with a lot of mucus!â€
In this scene, the kids steal two years’ worth of Halloween candy. But there isn’t punishment in the show, right? Are there guidelines within the room for how to write conflict involving the kids?
J.T.: The thing I really love in “Smoking†is with Curtis, the kid who smoked, Gregory was like, “Well, did we talk to the kid about why he did it? He was a good kid.†That episode reflected an aspect of my life, because I was actually expelled for smoking in boarding school, but it felt like I got a little bit of power over that memory because that school is now closed!
Nice!
J.T.: That’s something we do well: There’s always a solution. There are always lessons, but we’re not trying to hit you over the head with it.
B.N.: That’s one of the areas where reality vs. fiction comes up, because I think in a lot of these situations in the real world, we see Black and brown kids penalized, treated poorly, and not given a second chance. And part of us being able to create a new world is to put some of how we wish we had gotten to come up, and the values that we as a room hold, and the way that we want to imagine the world can be. We get to work that into how the students are treated when they make a mistake.
Q.B.: And that goes into the ethos of the hiring process. When we were hiring, we weren’t just hiring writers. We were hiring people — good people. It wasn’t a part of the interview to be like, “Hey, are you a bad person or a good person?†But you can hear where people’s morals lie about children, about education, about things like punishment. I don’t care how funny someone is; you can be the funniest motherfucker on the planet, but we were looking for a certain heart when it came to making this show, a certain ethos so that we don’t even have to have those conversations. We always start the room on the same page and know that we don’t have to worry about those kids being harmed, or our characters being harmed, or causing harm to the audience. While we still don’t shy away from larger topics, we just know that the ethos of the whole room is in the right place, and it started from day one.
K.P.: It’s also a very safe room, where we definitely get made fun of and we make fun of each other —
Joya McCrory: Shut up, Kate!
K.P.: See?
[Laughter.]
K.P.: But if you are picking up on something that is unintentional and you’re like, “I don’t know if this is what we want to say with this character or this story line,†we are able to say that, and we have showrunners who are like, “No, tell us, tell us,†because some things you just miss.
Q.B.: And notice, really quickly, how the white men in our room are being quiet?
[Laughter.]
Q.B.: They let everybody talk! Riley and Garrett ain’t say two words because it’s the ethos of the room to let the marginalized voices speak!
Be the change you want to see.
J.T.: It’s about time.
Q.B.: That’s true! It’s a natural order. The bald people get to speak before the people with hair, the Black people get to speak first. It’s the order. I can’t explain it to y’all!
J.T.: I don’t know where I stand in this!
Q.B.: You get to speak first! No, Black women first, then you. Then Justin, then Kate, then the people who are bald and the people with hair!
Is there anything you guys want to say about that?
Riley Dufurrena: That’s fair!
[Laughter.]
Here’s a clip from the season-three finale “Party,†written by Chad Morton and Rebekka Pesqueira —
Q.B.: Chad! Chad is my son!
[Laughter.]
Q.B.: He’s not. This is a cool story: He was our PA, and then he became a writer’s assistant, and now he is a writer.
B.N.: Because we do 22 episodes, we have the opportunity to do things like give the assistants scripts and have them do scripts the next season. That’s something that we’re losing with these shorter orders. So when you’re asking for people to do more episodes, that means more opportunity for people who are trying to get a start in this business.
Quinta, you’ve said this episode was partially motivated “by me saying, ‘I’m gonna throw a party at my house’ and never getting to it, and my writers giving me shit about it because I kept saying I was going to but we kept getting busy.â€
B.N.: Let’s not let Justin Halpern out of this, who said he’s going to throw us a cheese party since season one, and he also has not done it.
J.T.: So did Pat!
J.H.: This is true. Part of being a showrunner is promising that you’re gonna have a party at your house and then never having it.
Q.B.: Exactly! No, but I was supposed to have a party, and I wanted to have everybody over, everyone can fall in love, have a good time.
J.M.: When you said that, everyone was single, and at this point, most of us are now in relationships. That’s how long it’s been!
R.D.: I have a kid now.
J.T.: I have five kids!
Q.B.: Some people are still single, so I’m going to throw a party. But let me get my bearings together!
Everybody cheered for the kiss, right? And Quinta, you said that you knew that the end of that season was the right time. Did the fact that it was a shorter season make it more difficult for the room to craft the beats of the relationship in season three?
Q.B.: I wonder what you guys think. We haven’t heard from you.
Garrett Werner: At the end of season three, we were running out of obstacles to put between Janine and Gregory. We were saying, like, “They should be together now at episode ten, and we have to stretch this out to episode 14,†so it was just us coming up with thing after thing after thing to keep them apart. That was tough, especially when we’d come off the strike and hadn’t been working for a long time.
Q.B.: The whole third season in general … First of all, I’m so proud of it and the work we did. No one will ever know how hard it is to come off of a strike, get put in the room, air in two months after we started writing, and still churn out what I consider to be good television.
G.W.: Yeah, absolutely! You don’t have to couch it!
Q.B.: No, I just didn’t want to honk our horn too much.
You’re accepting an award for your writing.
Q.B.: That’s true! Honk, honk! But no, I’m really proud of that work, because this is a show that is built for 22 episodes. Even though our first season was just 13, this is network television. So to go back to 13 following the strike, after really getting into a groove the second season, we had a lot of work to do. We had a lot of story to tell very quickly. They say pressure makes diamonds, and I feel like we are a fucking diamond. That season was a testament to what we were capable of, and I’m really just so proud of it.
J.H.: The delicate balance in the show is that everyone, across the board, has never wanted to make this “The Janine and Gregory Show.†She’s said that since we were doing the pilot: “I want this to be an ensemble, and this is a relationship that is definitely forefront in a lot of it, but this is never the show.†So it was challenging in season three to figure out how to nail that and give us and the audience what we wanted, but also not make it feel like that was the whole third season.
The other thing about season three is that we get a lot of new school-district characters, and I’m wondering what the room’s approach is to new characters. How does that work?
P.S.: Especially for the first three seasons, we talked about having an overarching facet that we wanted to explore that season. So we had charter schools in season two, and then it was the district in season three. And we wanted Janine to essentially feel like she’d abandoned her post at Abbott when she got the job at the district, and then ultimately be won back by the power of teaching and the allure of that — that it was her true vocation. So with the district, I think it was just a natural fit that these characters were going to be a large piece of the pie that season.
This feels like a good time to bring out the medal and the awards.
B.N.: I thought this was symbolic!
J.H.: Hardware!
Q.B.: Medals? Medals? Thank you so much!
Thank you guys so much for the work!
P.S.: What does it say?
Q.B.: It says “Vulture Roomy Award: Abbott Elementary.†And it has all of our names. We’re gonna hang it in our room. This is a real honor. People do not acknowledge the writers enough, ever, at any point, at any time. So I was very proud when we got the email that we were getting a Roomy, because I never even knew what a Roomy was, but I was very happy that our writers were being acknowledged. Do we get medals?
Yeah, you get medals as well.
Q.B.: It’s like a Nobel Peace Prize!
Yeah! Exact same level of respect.Â
[Each writer gets a medal.]
Q.B.: I feel like fucking Sha’Carri Richardson right now! This is so cool!
Before we go, I want to ask a few questions about the future of the show. There’s been a lot of talk about the Always Sunny crossover. What can you tell us about that and having those guys in the room with you?
G.W.: It’s my episode. I got extremely lucky, and it was amazing. We’re huge fans of what they do, and to have them there in person. Rob owns a soccer team in Europe, and you’re like, “You’ve got time to come talk to us?†Charlie was sick and he still Zoomed in. It was a dream, because it was a crossover that happened organically, where Rob and Quinta really wanted it to happen and everybody involved was really excited, as opposed to an executive going, “You know what would be fun?†So everybody was gung-ho and really excited to do it, and we got to push everything pretty far.
Q.B.: Our episode will air in January. I don’t know when their episode’s gonna air, but probably in June. Their episode will be their version of what happened in this story line. I love it. They’re great. We just went to the mix the other day, and I was just looking at it like, Holy shit. Worlds colliding.
K.P.: Urkel on Full House.
Q.B.: Urkel on Full House changed my life!
If there were no network considerations — nothing that would get in your way — do you guys have any dream crossover episodes? I ask this because you gave an interview, Quinta, where you said how much you like that Ghosts uses the term “sucked off.â€
Q.B.: I want the teachers to go on a game show. There’s this game show I like on Game Show Network called America Says. And it’s always teachers on there, right? I really want our teachers to go on that show. Justin says it can’t happen.
J.H.: Owned by another network. Cannot happen.
Q.B.: I’m gonna make that one happen!
Does anyone else have any ones that they would love?
J.M.: 9-1-1!
Q.B.: No! Joya!
J.M.: They have to get rescued, they go to L.A. I have it all in my head.
J.T.: It feels like, because they have The Bachelor and The Bachelorette go before us, that they want Mr. Johnson to be on The Golden Bachelor.
I think everybody wants that.
Q.B.: I love that. He’d be so good on The Golden Bachelor!
R.W.: I don’t know if his wife would like that though.
Now that your crossover episode has been filmed, do you feel like you achieved what you wanted?
J.H.: It ended up being the very best version of a crossover that could be done. I’m so proud of it.
Q.B.: Me too. It’s really tight. We’ve done some cool things this year.
J.H.: It’s not like the Sunny gang shows up in our cold open and then they’re gone. Our two episodes are of a piece, and I think this is something that people are going to look back on and go, “Wow, they actually pulled this off.†I don’t think a crossover’s been done in the way we ended up doing it, although I will say that almost every day, the writers came in and said, “I don’t think this is going to happen.â€
Q.B.: Lemme tell you what happened. I said, “I want to do this,†and Justin says, “There is no way.†And Kate very rightfully pointed out one day —
K.P.: I said that if you want Quinta to not do something, you say, “You shouldn’t do that, and here are all the logical reasons why.†Otherwise, if you say, “You can’t do that†—
Q.B.: … I’mma do it.