Quinta Brunson takes a lot of pride in her sitcom, Abbott Elementary. The show, focused on a Philadelphia public school system, has won many awards and has fans ready for a new season.
In a conversation with Glamour Magazine for their series of recognizing its chosen Women of the Year, Brunson took some time to address a request for a school shooting episode that was made last year.
“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 continued to explain her disposition on the type of episode that would be.
“To us, these school shootings are the biggest thing happening, but when I talk to my friends who are teachers, yes, that’s huge, but today they’re just trying to get through this lesson,” she continued. “They’re just trying to get the reading scores up. They’re just trying to do this job. If anything, the school shooting thing is in the background, like, ‘F**k.’ It’s kind of like, ‘We got to deal with that, too?’ Do you know what I mean?”
“So it’s complicated, and I just don’t know if I want to dedicate my space to that. I don’t want to open up my show to that political violence,” Brunson concluded. “I consider it that at this point — even the discourse of it is violent. And although I participate in it outside of my show, and I’m a huge advocate for eradicating gun violence in this country, but I don’t think my show has to carry that.”