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New TV: Abbott Elementary - Very Funny Black version of The Office starring Quinta Brunson UPDATE: CROSSOVER EVENT!

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Lisa Ann Walter Burst Into Tears When Finding Out Talia Shire Would Play Her Mom on ‘Abbott Elementary’

The actress talks about why Bette Midler's pitch for the guest role didn’t pan out and cooking for the Schemmenti family dinner scene in Wednesday's "Winter Break" episode.
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The episode was funny. Amazing that nobody knew/cared that Charlie didn't know how to read. The gang was there usual selves minus the curse words.
Quinta's character calling Dee a bird........
 
ew.com

'Abbott Elementary' producers cut Frank–Mr. Johnson backstory from crossover episode for time

Producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker break down the epic 'Abbott Elementary' and 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' crossover episode, including the Frank and Mr. Johnson backstory that got cut for time.
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Abbott Elementary producers cut an extensive Frank–Mr. Johnson backstory from It's Always Sunny crossover episode​

Producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker break down the epic 'Abbott Elementary' and 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' crossover episode
By
Maureen Lee Lenker

Published on January 8, 2025 09:00PM EST

Danny DeVito on Abbott Elementary

Danny DeVito on 'Abbott Elementary'. Photo:
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday night's episode of Abbott Elementary, "Volunteers."

We always knew that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Frank (Danny DeVito) would easily match Abbott Elementary's Mr. Johnson's (William Stanford Davis) weird.

But we just didn't know how much. Abbott producers Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker revealed to Entertainment Weekly that Wednesday's crossover episode was originally supposed to feature an elaborate backstory between the two characters. But they had to cut it for time.

"We did at one point have a whole backstory between Frank and Mr. Johnson that they did know each other," Schumacker says. " It was that they went to high school together. They dated the same woman who was a canonical character in Sunny, this character dynasty. That ended up falling away just as a function of, 'Hey, we can't tell that story. Maybe let's save it for another time.' 21 and a half minutes is not a lot of time to tell a story."

Talia Shire cast as Melissa Schemmenti's mother on Abbott Elementary after Bette Midler pleaded for role

In addition to Frank and Mr. Johnson, there were plenty of other hysterical pairings in the episode, including Mac (Rob McElhenney) becoming an assistant to Ava (Janelle James), Dee (Kaitlin Olson) impresses Janine (Quinta Brunson) until she tries to seduce Gregory (Tyler James Williams), and Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) tries to teach Charlie (Charlie Day) to read.

Halpern and Schumacker took us behind the scenes of crafting the first of two crossover episodes, including how they decided who to pair with who, if Charlie's new-found literacy will remain canon across shows, and more.

Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito on Abbott Elementary

Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, and Danny DeVito on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did this come to be? Was it totally spurred by the social media interactions between both casts?

PATRICK SCHUMACKER: There were a couple of points of entry. There was social media stuff, but it really kicked off backstage at the Emmys or possibly the TV upfronts. There were two different instances where Quinta and Rob were occupying the same space in person. At first, it felt like just an in joke. And with every subsequent inadvertent run-in it became more of an, "Actually, I think we could maybe make this work."

Lisa Ann Walter wants a musical episode of Abbott Elementary: 'Pretty much everybody can blow'

It's Always Sunny is a lot more adult than Abbott. They're on cable and not primetime, so they can do and say a lot of things that you guys can't. Was it difficult to find the voices of these characters without having access to that explicit content?

JUSTIN HALPERN: No, because it was told from our POV. It's an Abbott episode, and when that's our entry point and the POVs are our characters, it becomes much clearer to us. We were more concerned at the start about, "Tonally will their characters be able to fit?" rather than they can't curse and can't do the crazy stuff that they do? Once we figured out the story where the tones would work, then it was fun. The writer, Garrett Werner, is a massive Sunny fan, so he had those voices down pretty well. And then, we shared the script with Rob and their team and told them, "Hey, if anything sounds off, tell us what it is and we will change it." There was a couple lines like that, but for the most part it was pretty good.

SCHUMACKER: We were pretty judicious, but we still were able to put in some things that were maybe a little bit more out there for a typical Abbott episode. Mr. Johnson, Gregory, and Frank's story, for instance, is not something that you would see on a typical episode of Abbott with Frank getting caught in the trap covered in piss-soaked belts. We were able to do it lightly.

Lisa Ann Walter worried women would 'hate' her Abbott Elementary character for becoming 'kind of a hoe’

Lisa Ann Walter, Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Charlie Day on Abbott Elementary

Lisa Ann Walter, Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Charlie Day on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
The next season of Sunny hasn't premiered yet, but have you guys already shot the crossover? Do you know what that's going to look like yet?

SCHUMACKER: Yeah, it's been written, it's been shot. I was present for quite a bit of it, and it's very cool. The ideal viewing experience will eventually be watching these two episodes back to back, even though I don't know if they've even solidified their date yet, but eventually, they're going to end up on Hulu together and it'll be very easy to access both of them back to back. They do very much play off of each other.

Okay, so this episode's very self-contained. They could easily leave Abbott and never be heard from again. Is there a clear throughline between the two episodes besides the characters entering each other's worlds?

HALPERN: Their episode is what's happening in between our episode in the scenes that we're not showing. You're seeing what they're doing. It's really clever the way that they piece together their episode. It's really ambitious.

SCHUMACKER: There was a lot of trust between both writing staffs and producers in each other's ability to capture the essence of each other's shows. When we were breaking our episode, we had to send the Sunny team a rough beat sheet before we were able to write out the entire script. They had to start working on their episode a little bit early because their episode with our cast was the first one that they shot in their production order.

Chris Perfetti lookalike Plasma wants to bring Drag Queen Story Hour to Abbott Elementary in Drag Race crossover

Quinta Brunson and Kaitlin Olson on Abbott Elementary

Quinta Brunson and Kaitlin Olson on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
In terms of breaking those beats, how did you figure out which characters you wanted to pair off with whom?

HALPERN: We work from a place of what do we want to see as writers on the show, but then we also coalesced around a couple things in their show that are canonical to Sunny that seemed to fit nicely in our universe. The fact that Charlie can't read lends itself nicely to, "This is a school, so somebody finds that out. We have empathetic teachers. They're going to want to help that person." And seeing Sheryl Lee Ralph teach Charlie how to read is really funny to us.

SCHUMACKER: Those two got along like gangbusters. Sheryl wants to do a spinoff.

From the earliest discussions, was it a given from the start that Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) would have been to Paddy's in the past?

SCHUMACKER: We did an initial brainstorming session that we did with Rob and Charlie in the room, and the question was, "Who's going to recognize 'em? Who's going to put two and two together when they show up?" Given where she's from and the crowd that she runs in, Melissa's the obvious choice for that.

Sheryl Lee Ralph shares tales from her storied career: a Barbie from Denzel, a haunted hotel, Bill Clinton, and more

Tyler James Williams and Kaitlin Olson on Abbott Elementary

Tyler James Williams and Kaitlin Olson on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
You often reference pop culture or celebs in the show, particularly Barbara getting people's names wrong. So do both Frank and Danny DeVito exist in the Abbott universe?

SCHUMACKER: Wow, I don't know that we've explored that.

HALPERN: I would say no because I don't think Danny DeVito and Frank exist in Sunny. So now that we have said we are in a shared universe with Sunny, we have to adopt some of their rules.

SCHUMACKER: Has Bradley Cooper been in a movie with Danny DeVito?

HALPERN: You are f---ing up our brains right now.

Charlie Day on Abbott Elementary

Charlie Day on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Quinta Brunson wants Daniel Radcliffe to play Mr. Johnson's son on Abbott Elementary

In terms of Barbara teaching Charlie to read, does that mean that in future seasons of Sunny that he will be slightly less illiterate?

HALPERN: That's a good question for them. He reads a little at the end of our episode, but he's not taking down Cormac McCarthy.

SCHUMACKER: It's probably a muscle he's going to have to continue to exercise. If he doesn't, it's going to atrophy. They can do with it what they want. I would believe it either way. But to your point about whether there are real consequences of this episode in the mythology of both shows. Certainly for our show, there are consequences with regard to the golf club. This is an episode that it isn't wholly self-contained. It'll reward viewers who have been sticking with this entire season in that there is a little bit of movement in that overarching storyline. We wanted to make sure that it still felt like an Abbott episode and that it wasn't this gimmicky thing that if you were unfamiliar with Sunny, you could watch it and it would still feel like, "Hey, these are really cool guest stars that we got on the show playing interesting characters that maybe you've never seen before." Maybe it turns you onto Sunny, which would be amazing.

Was Janine calling Dee "bird-ass" intended to be a reference to the guys always calling her Bird?

HALPERN: That was serendipity.

Rob McElhenney and Janelle James on Abbott Elementary

Rob McElhenney and Janelle James on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Abbott Elementary's Larry Owens recites Sheryl Lee Ralph's Sister Act 2 monologue to her face

Mac came out awhile ago on Sunny, but he's clearly not above offering Ava sexual favors. Can you talk about sussing that out and their strange dynamic?

SCHUMACKER: His intent was not that what he was offering was overtly sexual. He just meant anything that she needs. She took it to mean that. There was this whole run that they went on that we couldn't use all of because there were some things that definitely would not fly on ABC.

Like what?

SCHUMACKER: Ava has a line about the white guys that she's into, and she names Johnny Knoxville and Johnny Bravo. I almost ruined a take off-camera cackling and spitting out my coffee because Rob ad-libbed, "That Johnny Knoxville guy destroyed his penis. There's nothing there." I was like, "Okay, well that one, we can't say on ABC."

HALPERN: I bet they can say it on Dr. Odyssey.

Actually, there was a man who broke his penis on Dr. Odyssey.

SCHUMACKER: Well see that show has the monopoly on destroyed penises then.

Glenn Howerton on Abbott Elementary

Glenn Howerton on 'Abbott Elementary'.
Gilles Mingasson/Disney
Glenn Howerton takes issue with Abbott Elementary doc cameras in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover clip (exclusive)

Dennis refuses to be on camera. Did Glenn Howerton have limited availability or what propelled that choice?

SCHUMACKER: You got it. Glenn had a show that he is a series regular on called Sirens. It's the Netflix show, and it was shooting in New York. He flew in specifically to work on this and had to fly back. We had him for half a day, so we had to build that in. That was one of those ones where we didn't know if we had him, and so, we had to stay a little bit nimble as far as breaking the story. But he's very heavy in their episode.

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Jacob almost says their show title at the end. Did you go back and forth on whether you wanted to have it in there at all? Why'd you decide to cut it off mid "Philadelphia?"

HALPERN: From the first draft, Garrett put that little touch in. I don't even think that was in the outline. From the writer's draft, it was always cut off right there.

Would you be open to doing more crossover episodes?

SCHUMACKER: One a year is probably our max, given the complexity of actually pulling it off.

HALPERN: Maybe Ava will go on location at the White Lotus.
 
variety.com

Inside the ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘It’s Always Sunny’ Crossover: Easter Eggs, Character Pairings and Unleashing Five Sociopaths on the School

Inside the 'Abbott Elementary' and 'It's Always Sunny' crossover: Easter eggs, character pairings and unleashing five sociopaths on the school.
variety.com variety.com

Inside the ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘It’s Always Sunny’ Crossover: Easter Eggs, Character Pairings and Unleashing Five Sociopaths on the School​


By Michael Schneider
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ABBOTT ELEMENTARY - ÒVolunteersÓ - Ava announces the school district is sending a group of volunteers to help out at Abbott; however, when they arrive, things donÕt go as planned. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 8 (8:30-9:02 p.m. EST) on ABC. (Disney/Gilles Mingasson) SHERYL LEE RALPH, CHARLIE DAY

Disney
This week’s “Abbott Elementary” episode is just half of the story. “Volunteers” featured the long-awaited crossover with FX’s long-running “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” as told from the vantage point of the hit ABC sitcom. But you’ll have to wait for the upcoming season of “Sunny” to get the Gang’s take.
“Scenes that were happening off-screen in our episode are happening on-screen in theirs,” teases “Abbott” exec producer Patrick Schumacker. “Someone should get ahold of both episodes [once they air] and cut them together. This isn’t quite the perfect comp, but people keep comparing it to ‘Rashomon.’ We’re not getting different truths happening, but their episode does take place essentially in the same time frame.”

​


Schumacker suggests that Hulu should consider pairing both episodes for audiences to view back-to-back once the “Sunny” version (which has also already been filmed) airs sometime this spring. But in the meantime, we now have a pretty good idea of what the set-up will be in that episode as well: The “It’s Always Sunny” Gang ends up doing community service at Abbott Elementary — and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter), who has visited Paddy’s Pub before, recognizes them as the criminals they are.

“We were like, who from our cast would ever go to Paddy’s?” says exec producer Justin Halpern. “Oh, Melissa could stumble into that place once. We buy that she could.” Adds Garrett Werner, who wrote the episode: “That’s also the neighborhood she lives in, South Philly, and that’s where Paddy’s is. It was the clearest overlap.”
Star/creator/executive producer Quinta Brunson and the “Abbott” writers met with “Sunny” EPs/stars Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day early on to brainstorm ideas for the A story, and they settled on the “Sunny” canon that Charlie (Day) is illiterate.
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“As we were breaking what we thought the stories might be, and the pairings that we wanted to see together, we just kept coming back to the fact that Charlie can’t read,” Halpern says. “A good ‘Abbott’ episode generally has some sort of emotional grounding in the story and a character reaching some sort of satisfying, emotional moment towards the end. And so we were like, Barbara [Sheryl Lee Ralph] teaching him how to read could build to an actual meaningful moment and still hold true.”


And then, for a secondary storyline, the writers realized that both Janine (Brunson) on “Abbott” and Dee (Kaitlin Olson) on “Sunny” went to the University of Pennsylvania — and that this unlikely duo might bond over that.
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Quinta Brunson, Kaitlin Olson, “Abbott Elementary” (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)Disney
“Janine is the one teacher at Abbott who, at least at the top of it, wants to give these people the benefit of the doubt,” Schumacker says. “Because the way that they come into the fold is that the Gang is doing community service,. So they have to volunteer at Abbott to essentially avoid jail time. Once everybody puts two and two together that these are criminals, they’re all like, we got to get them out of here. But then Janine has bonded with Dee over their mutual alma mater, and she’s sort of blinded by that, a fellow Penn grad.”
Finding a way to merge the voice of two different kinds of comedies and mixing those tones was hard at first, Werner said. But the mockumentary nature of “Abbott” helped in splitting the difference.
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“The Gang are horrible sociopaths, but they are still aware of how they’re perceived,” he says. “So, just having the fact that they have to interact with cameras and they’re going to be documented, that sort of brings them back from where they could sometimes get to —because there’s filmed evidence about what they’re doing. So that helped bring them down. And then, just by having four sociopaths loose in this school, it kind of loosens up our characters’ tones too, just to sort interact with them. It ended up feeling kind of natural, actually.”
It’s unclear how many “Abbott” fans are “Sunny” viewers and vice versa — although the producers note that there aren’t many comedies on TV, so there’s a good chance fans of laughing watch both. But nonetheless, they made sure to make the episode still make sense even if you’re not familiar with Charlie, Dee, Mac (McElhenney), Frank (Danny DeVito) or Dennis (Glenn Howerton).
“We wanted to treat them like they were typical guest stars on the show,” Schumacker says. “I don’t think we over explain it at all. There’s a couple of little inside jokes, but those are pretty few and far between. We wanted to treat it like, if you’re just a fan of ‘Abbott,’ and you don’t know who these people are, you can appreciate it. And hopefully that works on the on the flip side as well. And in the episode of ‘Sunny,’ I think it will.”


Werner watched several famous TV crossovers to prepare for this one, and he came away knowing that he wanted this one to have teeth.
“Having grown up a TV watcher in the ‘90s, all of those crossovers were always cameo driven, like the characters were not load-bearing in the story,” Halpern says. “We didn’t just want to do the, ‘oh my god, Urkel showed up in “Full House!”’ We wanted to do something really ambitious that tied these two episodes together. That if you were someone who was going to watch both episodes, you would have a viewing experience that I don’t know that you would have in any other crossover.”
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Charlie Day, Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson, Danny DeVito, “Abbott Elementary” (Disney/Gilles Mingasson)Disney
Meanwhile, the “Abbott” writers also faced the challenge of not knowing which “Sunny” stars would be available for the episode beyond McElhenney and Day. Olson was busy at work on “High Potential,” while Howerton was shooting Netflix’s “Sirens.” And DeVito’s availability also wasn’t clear a t first.
“Rob’s like, you got Danny, and then our casting people would be like, ‘Danny won’t return our calls, and we don’t know where he is,’” Halpern says. (Which was confusing since “Abbott” and “Sunny” share the same casting teams.)
Adds Werner: “We didn’t know Dennis was going to be in the show until the day I went out on script. So it was just sort of like, let’s figure out a way to explain why he’s in there so briefly. It was just motivated by so much fun and enthusiasm by all parties, that that kind of just kept propelling us, no matter when, a little logistical challenge came up. Everybody’s attitude was like, ‘well, we’ll figure this out.’”
“Abbott” executive producer/director Randall Einhorn was also a bridge between the two shows, having also directed on “Sunny.” “Randall was like this middle ground of building trust between both sides, where Randall could vouch for us and for them for each other,” Werner says. “There was just an immediate comfort, I think, that he brought to everything that we could not have had with any other director on the planet.”
Among the episode’s Easter eggs, Werner notes that every episode of “Sunny” kicks off with a title card that includes the day and time. So on “Abbott,” “we don’t have title cards, but after the cold open, the very first line is somebody saying the day and time as like, a nod to ‘Sunny.’ There’s other little references like they make. It’s just very fun to figure out all the lore of ‘Sunny,’ and then what is the lore of us. So both Janine and Dee both have big feet. It’s like a very strange little thing, because they can line up on that and serve both audiences.”


And besides his inability to read, Charlie’s affinity for bird law on “Sunny” comes into play on “Abbott” as well. That’s partly because the “Abbott” team wanted this episode to still play an important part of Season 4’s ongoing storyline: The legal showdown regarding a golf course moving into the “Abbott” neighborhood.
“This episode is every bit as important as every other episode in this season, as far as the seasonal mythology goes,” Schumacker says. “In Season 4, we have the specter of this golf course and the gentrification in the neighborhood. There’s the illicit deal that Ava has struck with the lawyer from the golf course who’s giving Abbott payola, hush money, essentially. That stuff all comes into play in this crossover episode, and the ‘Sunny’ Gang influences that relationship as well. This episode doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It actually is one that rewards ‘Abbott’ fans who are planning on watching the whole season.”
This episode even contains what the writers say is the most elaborate special effect “Abbott Elementary” has ever done: The school’s scoreboard dropping off the gym wall in the cold open.
“It doesn’t really have to do with the ‘Sunny’ people at all, it was just another big thing we did for this episode,” Werner says. “We dropped the scoreboard before, but it was off-camera and just the sound effect. But this one we actually rigged up. There were all these tests of the scoreboard falling. It could fall into all these different ways and stuff. Randall and I were just like, ‘what’s the fastest, funniest way for it to fall?’ So we did it in one take. It really was amazing.”
Quips Halpern: “We’re a regular ‘Avatar’ over here.”
Next up, it’s still unclear when the “Sunny” side of this crossover will air, and the producers are hesitant to give any hints at what might transpire during their version of the tale.
“I don’t want to spoil any of their stuff, because it’s really their story to tell, but I will say that what they did is really ambitious,” Halpern says. “If you’re a fan of ‘Abbott,’ you’re going to definitely want to watch their episode.”
 
tvline.com

Did Abbott Elementary Teach the It’s Always Sunny Gang a Lesson? Grade the Crossover!

Two comedy forces collided as 'Abbott Elementary' welcomed the gang from 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' — did the crossover make the grade?
tvline.com tvline.com

variety.com

Inside the ‘Abbott Elementary’ and ‘It’s Always Sunny’ Crossover: Easter Eggs, Character Pairings and Unleashing Five Sociopaths on the School

Inside the 'Abbott Elementary' and 'It's Always Sunny' crossover: Easter eggs, character pairings and unleashing five sociopaths on the school.
variety.com variety.com
 

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