Emmy-winning “Abbott Elementary” creator and star Quinta Brunson grew up on a diet of Nick at Nite, so she remembers “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” fondly.
“That show went platinum in my household,” she says. “ ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ was supremely important to me. As a kid, I wasn’t necessarily looking for representation or anything other than ‘this is a really funny show.’ And that theme song is second nature to me!”
Later on, as Brunson pursued her dreams, Moore’s path was a guidepost. So it’s all the more appropriate that Brunson is set to receive the Mary Tyler Moore Visionary Award at Variety’s FYC TV Fest on May 6.
“Seeing her first on ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ she gave me this understanding of how the business could work — that you could be a featured player on one show and then a lead on your own show,” says Brunson. “And then have your own business, have your own studio. I remember seeing Mary Tyler Moore on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and seeing these two incredible women in media and television just sitting there chatting it up, that was really defining for me. It made me never question whether or not I could do this.”
Even now, Brunson continues to be a student of television. She’s currently rewatching “Girlfriends,” caught up on old episodes of “The Steve Harvey Show” and has given “Dharma & Greg” a try for the first time.
“I remember it from when I was younger, but I never actually watched the series,” she says. “I know it was a big sitcom, and that show was everywhere at the time — but now, I personally barely ever hear it mentioned! It was a very good pilot.”
That’s not all: Brunson is seeking out sitcoms that are long forgotten, like NBC’s “Inside Schwartz,” which starred Breckin Meyer as a sportscaster, whose dating life was interrupted by daydreamed commentary from real-life sports personalities. It ran for just nine episodes in 2001, but failed to hold on to the audience from its “Friends” lead-in.
“I came across the pilot on YouTube, and now I’m trying to find the rest of it,” Brunson says. “I’m really obsessed with one-season shows from that time, for some reason. A lot of them didn’t get canceled because they weren’t good. There was just so much TV being made that if it didn’t hit that ratings benchmark, it wasn’t going to last that long.”
Brunson is coming off another busy year on “Abbott,” one of the few sitcoms left on broadcast TV that produces an astounding 22 episodes a season. Once the norm, that output size is now considered
an Olympic-sized feat.
“Knowing we have a Season 6 on the horizon, which will presumably also be for 22 episodes again, we wanted to start timing and spacing things out differently,” she says. “You don’t want to blow all the possibilities too soon of where these stories can go. Laying this show out from Season 1, I always had different end markers in place for each character, for the school. But five seasons in, you’re really feeling it: ‘Phew, we got 22 to fill this out.’ It pushes you into areas of expanding in places you couldn’t predicted.”
That’s why this year, Brunson and company didn’t take their foot off the gas as they produced two major storylines: Early in the season, “Abbott” had to shut down due to furnace issues, forcing the school to temporarily move to a mall (filmed at the abandoned Westfield Promenade Mall in the L.A. neighborhood of Woodland Hills, right before it was torn down). And then came a shocker: Late in the season, Janine (Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) broke up.
And yes, the fans were up in arms, just as Brunson expected.
“But it’s still shocking when you get the exact reaction you wanted to,” she says. “We are in a modern TV viewing age where people do not have to watch your show. They can watch the phone. There’s a million other things that they could be doing. So you want to make sure that at the very least, you’re surprising.”
Just like Mary Tyler Moore, Quinta Brunson’s got spunk.
variety.com
#Quinta #Brunson #Mary #Tyler #Moore #Inspired #Career #Path
