Cousins! Quinta Brunson is addressing why her award-winning series ‘Abbott Elementary’ will not have an episode dedicated to school shootings!
In a recent interview with Kristen Welker for Glamour Magazine, the 2023 Women of the Year recipient responded to a comment made surrounding a school shooting episode.
“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,” said Quinta.
She explained that violence of that specific degree would represent two different realities of teaching and that’s not what her show represents.
“There are two different realities,” she said. “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.”
Quinta went on to express that ‘Abbott Elementary’ has a orbit of purposely focusing on the joys challenges of teaching .
I “really wanted to start with the everyday story first, and let everything else fall into place.”
“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].”
The 32 year also reflected on the complications of writing an episode dedicated to the tragedies of school shootings.
“For audiences, these school shootings are the biggest thing happening,” but for her teacher friends, “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. 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?’”
According to reports from BET News, the United States of America has experienced nearly 350,000 school shootings.
“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.”
Quinta also addressed a request for a school shooting episode back in 2022 on Twitter (X).
“Wild how many people have asked for a school shooting episode of the show I write. people are that deeply removed from demanding more from the politicians they’ve elected and are instead demanding “entertainment.” I can’t ask “are yall ok” anymore because the answer is “no.”