The Office Fans Will Love ABC’s New Hit Series Abbott Elementary

ABC’s Abbott Elementary is a new mockumentary-style sitcom about a group of teachers working in the underfunded titular school set in Philadelphia. Quinta Brunson created and stars in the series, which features a cast of hilarious actors you know and love.

Known for her work on A Black Lady Sketch Show, Abbott Elementary marks Brunson’s first major network creation. Inspired by other docu-style sitcoms, she set out to highlight teachers with Black actors at the forefront, rather than pushed to the sidelines.

“When The Office and Parks and Recreation came along, I [thought], this is extremely my jam. What made those comedies work was having a veil to go behind,” she told Slate. “We know teachers. We have this one-dimensional version of them... But what’s behind that one dimension?”

Those beloved sitcoms featured few main Black cast members, which inspired Brunson while casting Abbott Elementary: “We’re reduced to our races and not our actual feelings and thoughts. That really drew me to the mockumentary format... I was like, why haven’t we done this yet?”

“I found myself reevaluating the relationships my teachers must have built with the very creative and sometimes hard-to-focus child that I was myself,” Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris) said of playing Gregory Eddie, a substitute teacher who hopes to become principal.

Sheryl Lee Ralph (Sister Act 2) drew from her own experiences to portray longtime kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard: “Quinta has given me a great gift because I get to act while being parts of myself, parts of people in my family because I come from a long line of educators.”

“Our characters are really well carved out and different, but really all work together in a good way… in a way that people work together in an office, which is what we’re doing,” comedian Janelle James said of her role as Ava Coleman, who blackmailed her way to becoming principal.

Chris Perfetti stars as history teacher Jacob Hill, one of the school’s only educators aside from Brunson’s Janine Teagues who’s kept their job at Abbott Elementary for over a year. “We kind of are The Avengers… if The Avengers never succeeded,” he joked in a recent interview.

Lisa Ann Walter (The Parent Trap) plays Sicilian-American second grade teacher Melissa Schemmenti, whom she feels strongly connected to: “I was like, how’d they write me? ... My mom’s family is Sicilian. For decades, she was a school teacher in a downtown D.C. public school.”

Since its December 2021 premiere, Abbott Elementary has received rave reviews from its own actors and critics alike, and the comedy currently holds a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. You can catch new episodes of the series Tuesdays on ABC or stream it on Hulu.