"Abbott Elementary's" Quinta Brunson Hits Back at Fans "Demanding" a 'School Shooting Episode'
by Ryan Schwartz
May 25, 2022


"Abbott Elementary" creator and star Quinta Brunson is sick to her stomach — not only over America’s “love affair” with guns, but the apparent demand for her hit ABC comedy to address the gun violence epidemic in Season 2.

On Tuesday, 19 children and two adults were killed when a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (The 18-year-old suspect was also killed.) The tragedy marked the deadliest American school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary nearly a decade ago.




“Wild how many people have asked for a school shooting episode of the show I write,” Brunson shared on Twitter Wednesday.

“People are that deeply removed from demanding more from the politicians they’ve elected and are instead demanding ‘entertainment.’ I can’t ask ‘are y’all ok’ anymore because the answer is ‘no.’”



“Please use that energy to ask your elected official to get on Beto time and nothing less,” she pleaded.

“I’m begging you…. I don’t want to sound mean, but I want people to understand the flaw in asking for something like this. We’re not okay. This country is rotting our brains. I’m sad about it.”

https://tvline.com/2022/05/25/abbott-elementary-quinta-brunson-texas-school-shooting-reaction/

Why Quinta Brunson Won’t do a School Shooting Episode on "Abbott Elementary"
by Abbey White
Nov. 1, 2023


Quinta Brunson says there are “two different realities” to teaching — and a school shooting episode wouldn’t fit into the reality "Abbott Elementary‘s" universe is most focused on.

The star and creator of the hit ABC workplace comedy has yet again responded to a question around why her series wouldn’t do a topical episode on the difficult subject in an extensive Women of the Year cover story with Glamour, in which she’s interviewed by fellow Philadelphian and Meet the Press host Kristen Welker.




The Emmy winner went on to explain that there were ultimately “two reasons” why that issue wouldn’t make sense for the series, despite her “knowing that school shootings happen all the time, every day or every week, unfortunately.”

“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 on the comedy, in which she says she “really wanted to lead with everyday story first, and let everything fold into that.”

“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.’ I think that’s the way the majority of the people that I [know are],” she told the magazine. “When they’re at work, the issue at work is just the task at hand.”




Speaking directly to the challenges around situating a school shooting episode, Brunson says that while for audiences “these school shootings are the biggest thing happening,” talking to her friends who are currently working 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. “If anything, the school shooting thing is in the background, like, ‘****.’ It’s kind of like, ‘We got to deal with that too?'”




Brunson admits that it’s ultimately “complicated” and that she isn’t sure she wants to dedicate the space she has with the hit comedy to what tackling that topic could do within the larger culture.

“I don’t want to open up my show to that political violence,” she explained. “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 … I don’t think my show has to carry that.”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/quinta-brunson-abott-elementary-school-shooting-episode-1235634457/