Quinta Brunson’s Draws The Line

Abbott Elementary creator Quinta Brunson doesn’t want her hit show to “carry” the realities of gun violence. The Emmy Award-winning actress explained her reasoning during a recent interview with Glamour.

“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. I say that knowing that school shootings happen all the time, every day or every week, unfortunately,” she told the outlet. “But there are two different realities.”

Brunson continued, “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.”

She added, “I don’t want to open up my show to that political violence. 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.”

The Black Lady Sketch Show star also spoke about how she addresses race on the sitcom. “I really wanted to lead with everyday story first and let everything fold into that,” she said. “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.’”