Quinta Brunson Was Built For This

Lately, Quinta Brunson has gotten hooked on Survivor. “There are a couple of things I think mirror life exactly,” she tells me, counting them off one by one. The first is the long-running reality competition series, on which one can observe the full, terrifying range of human behavior. Another is basketball, which she considers an apt analogy for Abbott Elementary, the hit ensemble comedy Brunson created, writes, and stars in. “You are a team member,” she explains, “and it’s up to you to either be the support, be the star, be the defense, set a screen so someone else can push through — prepare yourself for whatever you have to do.”

And finally, there’s Mario Kart, perhaps the realest metaphor for life of all. “You’re in the back trying to get to the front, you’re in the front trying to stay in the front, or you’re in the middle, just trying not to get hit with a banana,” she deadpans.

Famously petite in stature — she spent her recent Saturday Night Live monologue outlining the perks and perils of being 4-foot-11, with an assist from Sabrina Carpenter — Brunson’s comedic delivery is confidently understated. But she is also, compared to her unstoppably bubbly Abbott character, second-grade teacher Janine, a little more reserved in person. In her 2022 appearance on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, she expressed her unease toward long-form interviews. When we post up in a warmly lit studio at the end of her Bustle photo shoot, Brunson tells me she stands by that.

“I think I’m good in private situations, one-on-one, but every time I do a podcast, something bad happens,” she says, still in her Betty Boop-esque glam and dressed in a striped black windbreaker, cargo pants, and block heels. The podcast format seems to create a false sense of intimacy between host and guest, making it easy to forget the conversation is public, or at least assume your comments will be taken in good faith. The pop-culture podcast Who? Weekly has dubbed this phenomenon “podcast mouth.” Brunson finds this term spot on. “I’m officially done. I think Amy’s was my last,” she says, referring to Amy Poehler’s podcast, on which Brunson was asked about Bon Jovi and made a lighthearted offhand comment (“I don’t know white people. I know you, I know Tina Fey, I know white people in comedy, OK?”) that somehow still managed to start its own online discourse cycle.

These are the stray bananas and turtle shells Brunson is dodging now as her career ascends to, well, pretty much exactly where she thought she’d be. (“I believed that I would have my own show one day,” Brunson told Bustle in 2022.) Abbott Elementary and its cast have won four Emmys, three Golden Globes, and a few dozen more awards. Brunson’s own Emmy win for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2023, presented by Carol Burnett no less, made Brunson the first Black woman to win the award in more than 40 years. The show’s critical acclaim, along with its still-growing popularity — Abbott notched its most-watched episode ever last year — had made it all the harder for Brunson to be as private as she’d like to be, and used to be. “Even if you don’t give a lot, people want whatever they can get, and will take whatever they can get,” she says.

“Cutting my hair reminded me that I am an artist first. I want to feel things. I want to make choices. I want to be a person, and not just stuck in having to be a certain way for business.”

In March of this year, she filed for divorce from her husband of three years. The news — as covered by People, TMZ, CNN, and more — wasn’t something she was ready to share. “I remember seeing people be like, ‘She announced her divorce,’” Brunson says. “I didn’t announce anything. I think people have this idea that people in the public eye want the public to know their every move. None of us do. I promise you. No one wants [everyone] to know when you buy a house, when you move, when a major change happens in your personal life. It’s just that that’s public record information.”

Here, I confess to having seen a tabloid story about the house Brunson purchased last year. “I hated that,” she says. “I hate all of it.”

For millennials who spend a little too much time on the internet, Brunson’s rise to fame sounded like a modern-day fairytale. A Philly native and the youngest of five children, Brunson began taking improv and sketch courses at Chicago’s famed Second City while still enrolled in college back home. She eventually dropped out and moved to Los Angeles, where she worked retail jobs and made videos with characters like “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date.” (Brunson’s catchphrase: “Ooooh, he got money.”) The sketches started going viral on Instagram, enough for Brunson to get recognized in the wild, but they didn’t really pay the bills. So, at the invitation of a friend, she started making content for BuzzFeed and eventually took a full-time job there.

Her star power was obvious back then — I know because I worked at BuzzFeed then, too, and though we were in different cities and different departments, Brunson was the co-worker we knew we would brag about having worked with one day (and certainly the one everyone asks me about now). The internet couldn’t keep Brunson forever — her dreams were much bigger than BuzzFeed, and she left in 2018. “For me, it was just a job,” she says. “It helped me sharpen my skills for universal storytelling, but the internet overall felt like a vehicle for showcasing what I was capable of.”

“I love my fans, I love the people who watch Abbott. So you want to to listen to them, but when it comes to matters of your personal life, you do have to tune it out.”

Still, the job provided an early creative community: Justin Tan, who helped get her in the door at BuzzFeed, and Kate Peterman, another alum of the site, are now both Abbott writers. When I ask Brunson if it was important to her to bring her early comedy peers along with her, her correction is telling. “It’s not important as much as it is I like those people,” she says. “I like their work. I’ve always liked them. When I’m thinking about people who are good at things or right for things, I’m always going to think about people I've worked with and have relationships with.”

After BuzzFeed, Brunson sold a few TV pilots, and took roles in Big Mouth and A Black Lady Sketch Show. Abbott Elementary, inspired by her mother’s 40 years as a public school teacher, premiered in late 2021 to critical acclaim and high ratings. Suddenly, Brunson wasn’t just a star — she was also in charge. “People used to tell me at the beginning of this that the No. 1 on the call sheet sets the tone, and the producer sets the tone — and I’m both of those roles,” she says. “I understand now, after doing this for four years, how important it was that I set the tone that I did when we first started.”

“Sometimes it’s as simple as I’m the first one in the morning,” she adds, “and the way I carry myself in the morning can determine how the rest of the set runs, not only as an actor, but as the creator of the show. I try to come in with a good attitude and a positive attitude, and it’s not hard to do. I’m very excited to go to work and appreciative of my cast and crew and naturally want the morale up.”

Tan and Peterman, calling during a break from the Abbott writers room, both say it’s a job Brunson was built for. “I’ve been friends with Quinta since we were in college, and she has always had the air of a boss,” Peterman says. “She speaks with such conviction, she’s very informed on the things she’s super opinionated about. To me, it just feels like, ‘Oh, she’s achieving the things she’s set out to achieve, and now she’s my boss — but she’s been calling the shots when it comes to her art and her projects since forever.”

“Even in Season 1 of her running the show and being a star and wearing all these different hats, it felt like there was almost no learning curve for her,” Tan adds. “She just got it, and it felt like she had been doing this for 20 years. I’ve worked on other shows with other new showrunners that didn’t handle it the way she did.”

“When Abbott started, it felt like, ‘OK, I’m quite public now, and I’m responsible for so many people. I need to be consistent. I need to show up a certain way. I need to be reliable.’”

In their eyes, Brunson’s greatest strength as a leader is her gut instinct. “A pitfall that I’ve seen other people fall into — and I’ve fallen into myself — is thinking that there is a right choice and that there is a perfect joke,” Peterman says. “And yes, there have been perfect jokes, people have told them, but I don’t think she sees it that way. She sees it as: ‘This is great, let’s keep moving, because you could really spin out and spend forever trying to make something perfect, but it’s never going to be perfect.’ The decision is the biggest thing. And she backs herself completely."

“If there’s a pitch or she has an idea and it hits, that’s the one,” Tan says. “An idea that really makes her laugh — that’s the one.”

Though she’s not putting too fine a point on it, it’s clear that Brunson has begun to consider how Abbott — which was renewed for a fifth season back in January — might conclude. “We are so fortunate and blessed to be on a network TV show for five seasons, and for people to still be fans,” she says. “That being said, I have cast members who would love to pursue other projects, and our show is very time-consuming. We shoot about seven months out of the year. That can stop people from being able to do a lot of other things.”

And while she’s thrived in multi-hyphenate leadership, she’s also having fun planning for a future where she gets to just show up and act. “Right now, I’m receiving scripts, and waiting for that moment that feels like, ‘Oh man, this is exactly what I've been looking for,’” she says. “Abbott has been so successful, and I want to use that success to get other people's projects off the ground.” So what is she after, exactly? “I’m always interested in playing against type. I think that’s any actor’s dream,” she adds. “Right now my type is ‘Janine’ and ‘teacher.’ I’m looking forward to moving away from that a little bit.”

Perhaps her new haircut marks the first step. “I had wanted to cut it for so, so, so, so long and for multiple reasons I just didn’t do it,” Brunson says. “When Abbott started, it felt like, ‘OK, I’m quite public now, and I’m responsible for so many people. I need to be consistent. I need to show up a certain way. I need to be reliable.’” She needed, in other words, to protect the brand.

Plus, she worried that a dramatic haircut might signal something she didn’t really want signaled. “I got it in my head that that’s a bad sign,” she says with a laugh. “You can’t cut your hair, you can’t pierce your nose, you can’t get a tattoo. It’s going to give, ‘You don’t know who you are.’”

“I feel very serious about focusing on watering my own gardens, taking care of myself and the people around me.”

Over the years, she’s gotten better at ignoring the online commentariat, some of whom have pointed opinions about everything from what she should be offended by to whom she should date. “Those are invisible voices that aren’t in your home with you, that aren’t in your personal life, that aren’t your friends,” she says. “I love my fans, I love the people who watch Abbott. So you want to hear them, and you want to listen to them, but when it comes to matters of your personal life and decisions you make, you do have to tune it out.”

So, last fall, she went for it. “When I finally cut it off, there was something very liberating about it,” she says. “You can still change and evolve and start over. Cutting my hair helped remind me that I am an artist first. I want to feel things. I want to do things. I want to make choices. I want to be a person, and not just stuck in having to be a certain way for business.”

While she wishes you hadn’t read about it in the news, Brunson is pretty psyched about her new house, which has been the site of a few other big personal transformations. “I’m not afraid of a lot of things — I was afraid to paint my walls,” she says. “I’m working with an interior designer named Mandy Cheng — I’m name-dropping her because she’s wonderful — and I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten around to decorating my home if I didn’t have her. She was like, ‘Let’s take the plunge. You can always paint it back.’”

She’s been catching up on television — recent highlights include And Just Like That… (“I can’t look away”), Dying for Sex (“One of my favorite watches in a very long time”), and Andor (“One of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen in my entire life”) — but she thinks the home theater she’s building out could change her habits. “After that, it’s going to be a wrap [on TV],” she says. “I think I’ll be a movie girl.”

“This idea that people in the public eye want the public to know their every move — none of us do. I promise you.”

In the meantime, you can find her in the kitchen. The life of a television writer usually involves frequent takeout and catered lunches. Cooking “wasn’t something I previously did. It brought me the most anxiety in the world,” Brunson says. “Now, I’m really enjoying making myself breakfast in the morning. I make myself lunch. Having the ingredients in my home to make myself a meal has become really, really important to me.”

OK, so in a world of 10,000 cookbooks and YouTube chefs, how’d she figure out where to start? “Bobby Flay gave me his new cookbook,” she says sheepishly. “Then I have another cookbook that's kind of... it’s sad, a cooking-for-one cookbook I've been going through,” she adds with a laugh — Half Baked Harvest Quick & Cozy: A Cookbook, a gift from her security guard.

“I’m not a perfectionist in other areas, but if a meal isn’t perfect, I can be really hard on myself,” she says. “I want everyone to eat it and be like, ‘Yum, this is the best food I’ve ever tasted!’ And I don’t think that helps when you’re learning to cook more elaborate meals. You have to have room to grow. Every time you make it, you get to tweak and make it better.” In a recent triumph over culinary self-doubt, Brunson tried a new-to-her recipe — Dutch oven chicken thighs — for a group of friends. “They loved it,” she says, beaming.

This kind of self-compassion hasn’t always come easily to her. “It’s a transitional time. I think it’s true for me and my personal life, and it’s how I feel about myself, my career, and the world,” Brunson says. “I feel very serious about focusing on watering my own gardens, taking care of myself and the people around me who I actually interact with day-to-day.” (She doesn’t only mean “gardens” in a figurative sense: She has plans for a hydroponic garden in the new house, and would love to grow her own food someday.)

“I used to look at that as a selfish thing,” she says. “But there’s a reason they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before you try to help someone else.”

Top image credits: Palomo Spain coat, Kye Intimates bra and brief, Falke tights, Paris Texas shoes.