Quinta Brunson Takes a Step Away From Doing a School Shooting Episode, ‘I Don’t Want To Open Up My Show to That Political Violence’
Emmy-winning creator, writer, and star of ABC comedy, Abbot Elementary, Quinton Brunson, discussed her choice not to incorporate the challenging subject of school shootings in her series.
Speaking in a new interview for Glamour Magazine’s, “Women of the Year,” cover issue, Brunson clarified that her perspective revolves around the existence of two separate realities within the classroom: one in which teachers focus on navigating the day-to-day struggles, and another in which the public perceives the larger issues, such as school shootings, that impact the education system overall, typically through news coverage.
“I just think about the day-to-day in a workplace comedy, and I don’t think that that’s the realistic day-to-day in the classroom,” she explained. “There are two different realities. There’s the one present in the classroom where teachers are just trying to get through a lesson. And then there’s the outside perspective of us engaging with teachers through the news.”
Brunson compared her thought process on this topic to her approach to race in comedy, “To me, it’s a choice. I think it’s a choice to tell stories that are exclusively about race, which there’s absolutely nothing wrong with. It’s the same thing as making a show that directly chooses to tackle issues about being queer.”
She continued, “But with Abbott, I really wanted to lead with everyday story first and let everything fold into that. So I wanted to talk about, instead of “Janine confronts her Blackness,” or “Janine deals with this race issue,” it’s really just like, “Janine is trying to change a light bulb.”
In discussing the difficulties of integrating a school shooting episode within the Abbott Elementary series, the writer and actress mentions that while for audiences “these school shootings are the biggest thing happening,” talking to her friends who are currently employed as teachers has shown that “yes, that’s huge, but today they’re just trying to get through this lesson.”
“They’re just trying to get the reading scores up. They’re just trying to do this job,” she continued.
Quinta Brunson’s commitment to representing the real experiences of educators underscores her dedication to authenticity and her desire to provide audiences with a genuine portrayal of the classroom.
