“Abbott Elementary” producers tease season 4 from holiday episodes to that mystery crossover
Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker walk us through what's in store for Janine and the rest of the Abbott teachers.
Sharpen those pencils and pack those lunches because Abbott Elementary is back.
ABC's hit sitcom mockumentary returns on Oct. 9 for its biggest season yet (a 22-season episode order!). Season 4 finds all of the teachers at Abbott, after Janine's brief detour to the district last season. While Ava (Janelle James) may still be Ava, and Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) is set in her ways, there's plenty of other changes to reckon with.
Gregory (Tyler James Williams) and Janine (Quinta Brunson) are together for real, after three seasons of will they-won't they, while Jacob (Chris Perfetti) and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) are exploring their singledom (and deepening their friendship as roommates). Not to mention all the new revelations we're likely to get from Mr. Johnson (William Stanford Davis) at any moment.
Details on season 4 are scant, besides Brunson's tantalizing tease that a planned crossover episode could have the power to change television as we know it. But executive producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker are ready to shine a little light on what to expect going back to school.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Ben Onyx Dowdy, Janelle James, and Quinta Brunson on 'Abbott Elementary'ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You guys have established that these seasons run during the school year. Is that going to be the same case and will we get much of an update or a look at anything that was happening during the summer?
PATRICK SCHUMACKER: Yeah. We're going to try and align everything. We'll open essentially in October. So there will have been a couple of weeks or a month, let's say, that has passed at school. In the premiere, we'll talk a little bit about some things that happened over the summer, primarily with Janine and Gregory. Then, we're right back off to the races.
Speaking of Janine and Gregory, we got this extremely satisfying moment at the end of season 3. Obviously people love a will they, won't they, but you're not going to pull the rug out from under us, are you?
JUSTIN HALPERN: We hope for it to go through the course of any normal relationship and to hit the ups and downs. We tend to approach everything from character. A lot of people thought we had this master plan for that, and "In this season and this episode, the two will kiss and blah, blah, blah." But we've always tried to approach it from a character standpoint of "When are they going to be in a place where it would happen and when are they going to be in a place where things might get tough?" This is all to say that we like to keep everything open in terms of character growth, but no, we don't foresee at the moment that we're going to pull the rug out from anybody.
SCHUMACKER: The Gregory-Janine shippers will be pleased.
Janine was at the district last season. She chose to go back to Abbott. Are we going to see the district continue to be in play? Will Manny (Josh Segarra) still be a part of their lives or some of those other characters?
SCHUMACKER: It's fair to say that the district as an institution will continue to be a part of the lives of all the teachers. What combination of characters that we got to meet last season is still a little bit TBD. There's definitely a handful of district personalities that do show back up within the first episodes.
Related: Abbott Elementary producers unpack that big Janine and Gregory moment in the season 3 finale
Jacob and Melissa moved in together last season. Is that going to continue this year and what does that look like as it marches on?
HALPERN: Yeah, it is going to continue this year. One of the things that's fun for us is it allows us to see into their personal lives a little more, understand what's happening outside of their school lives. We're going to get a deeper understanding of everybody's family a little more, and that friendship will strengthen.
I know you guys really wanted to bring Ayo Edebiri last season. Obviously she's got a lot on her plate. Might we get to see her or Taraji P. Henson again this year?
SCHUMACKER: That one's TBD, but you're right, Ayo is very in demand these days, as is Taraji.
HALPERN: They're both incredible performers, so we would love to have them back at some point.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Matt Oberg, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Lisa Ann Walter, and Chris Perfetti on 'Abbott Elementary'Barbara mostly is so even keeled, but sometimes she's having a crisis. What would you say will be her biggest challenge or her arc this season?
HALPERN: Those are the conversations that we continuously have during the breaking of the first 10 episodes. So we're still kind of actively in those conversations right now. We really like seeing layers of characters that we haven't seen before each season. We try to push them in a direction where the audience is going to get a deeper understanding of them. We're not going to just do a story that feels akin to one we've done before. So our hope is that you're going to learn some things about Barbara and where she is in her life that you really haven't seen yet.
Sea Barbara is my favorite Barbara. Might we see her return?
HALPERN: She'll make an appearance. In fact, I'm saying that confidently, even though I don't know that we've broken the moment where we would see that yet, but we all love Sea Barbara.
SCHUMACKER: Not yet, but the holidays are coming up.
Sadly, last year you missed Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas and all these holidays that are ripe for great sitcom episodes. Are you excited to have that back this year? Are you going to take advantage of it?
SCHUMACKER: Very much so. It's so nice being able to mirror the school year and the calendar year.
HALPERN: You're getting a Halloween episode, you're getting a Christmas episode.
SCHUMACKER: Actually two Christmas episodes if all goes to plan schedule-wise. I believe we're going to have a double header in December of two Christmas-themed episodes.
We knew Ava was really into Gregory in spite of the tension between him and Janine. What does it look like for her having Janine and Gregory together?
HALPERN: It's funny, we always looked at Ava doing that as more about power and messing with him than anything else. We always said in the writers' room that if he reciprocated, she'd be like, "What? No, I don't want that." As she's matured, her relationship to Gregory and Janine has matured as well. I don't think that that's going to be something that she's going to want to get in the way of. She probably supports it.
Related: Sheryl Lee Ralph on being 'a little petty' on Abbott Elementary: 'Barbara was a bit stung by that'
The small nuggets we have gotten of her home life or her dating life have been really amazing, but they are quite small. Are we going to learn more about her this season?
HALPERN: Yes, you will. We are currently breaking an episode where you very much will.
Jacob and Zach (Larry Owens) came to a detente at the end of the season. Will we see Zach again this year? Are they going to continue to be part of each other's lives?
HALPERN: As of right now, they are broken up. Larry Owens is so great, so we will always look for an opportunity to bring him back for stuff, but that was a real breakup that ran its course.
SCHUMACKER: I mean, Zach's still in Philly, but you never know.
Tariq (Zack Fox) has been amping up his PTA and district antics. Are those going to complicate the lives of the teachers further?
HALPERN: You are absolutely correct. They will. Zack Fox is a comedic powerhouse. Rarely does someone pitch a Tariq idea that we aren't at least entertaining.
SCHUMACKER: Very early on in the season, the audience will get a glimpse at what Tariq is like as the leader of the PTA, and you can imagine that his regime will be run in an unorthodox manner.
We never quite know what Mr. Johnson is up to. Can you tease what kind of shenanigans he might be getting into this season?
HALPERN: Oh, man. He is the ultimate wild card because the one thing we've decided is that everything he said is true. So he's told zero lies in the history of the show. I'm always pitching stuff for Mr. Johnson's s backstory, but William Stanford Davis has said he likes to have the mystery be there. We think it's important for the character too. So we're always careful when we see little bits and pieces. My dream is for a fan to take everything we've done with Mr. Johnson and put it into some sort of autobiography that we can then digest, so we can see what we've said his life history has been like. If somebody could put that together in chronological order that would make the writers' room so happy.
SCHUMACKER: We need it. It would be a very useful reference for the writers at this point in time. In the premiere, I'll just say vaguely, Mr. Johnson has an interesting theory about what's been going on between Janine and Gregory.
This is going to be your biggest episode order yet, which gives you more room to play. You've had Sheryl sing with the choir storylines, Tariq rapping, and then we've had step class and all sorts of musical performances. Would you ever do a full musical episode?
SCHUMACKER: It would have to really make sense in the context of a show that is ostensibly a documentary. We don't do dream sequences, so in the context of a classic MGM musical or the Mean Girls film? No, I don't think so. That would take us out of our reality. But that's not to say that the school couldn't put on a musical production.
Quinta hinted at Comic-Con about this television-altering crossover episode. Can you tell me anything else about it?
HALPERN: I will just say that when she came to us with it, I was like, "How are we going to make this work?" I was really excited about it, but I was like, "I do not know how this is going to work." But I think we're close to figuring it out.
SCHUMACKER: Without giving anything away, we were able to spend some time in the writers' room with some of the creative forces behind the other show that will remain unnamed. And we're all getting on the same page about what this could be on both sides. But the idea is that there will be an Abbott episode, and there will be an episode of the other show that incorporates the Abbott characters.
Can you at least tell me if it will be before Christmas or after Christmas?
SCHUMACKER: After. Possibly the first episode back from the holidays.
Related: Quinta Brunson wants Daniel Radcliffe to play Mr. Johnson's son on Abbott Elementary
You're aces at guest stars every season. Do you have some great ones lined up?
SCHUMACKER: It was tough. It started to defy reality given how many celebrities were somehow crossing paths with the people of Abbott Elementary. We have some ideas in the works for sure, the crossover obviously being a pretty big one. But I will say, when you're trying to create a world that is ostensibly real life, you don't want to necessarily inundate that world with super recognizable faces, right? You can pick and choose, and we've had a lot of success. It's trying to strike a balance . There is such a thing as too much of a splashy cameo. So, we're starting out limiting it a bit more this season, but that's not like the door is shut on it by any means.
I know you're still breaking a lot of stuff, but could you tease the theme of the season as a whole?
SCHUMACKER: Thematically speaking, we're dealing with some areas of gentrification in the neighborhood in West Philly and how that is affecting the school. And you'll get more than a hint of that in the premiere.
Abbott Elementary returns Wednesday, Oct. 9 on ABC.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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