While perusing a liquor store several weeks ago, a fan noticed her and asked, “Ain’t you Janine?” She confirmed their suspicions, but they followed up: “Yeah, girl, you need to dump that boyfriend.” (Janine’s boyfriend throughout most of season 1 is the wannabe rapper Tariq, played by Zack Fox.) “I was like, ‘Okay,’” Brunson told Meyers.
As she told Seth Meyers during a late-night appearance in March, she’s occasionally recognized as Janine whenever she’s back home in Philadelphia. The 32-year-old creator behind the record-breaking ABC sitcom about an underfunded Philadelphia elementary school, Brunson is sometimes amused by this affection. Lisa Ann Walter, who plays Abbott’s brusque Sicilian second grade teacher Melissa Schemmenti, chalks it up to this: “There is nobody in the world that doesn’t love her.” Audiences catch a glimpse of this version-the real Quinta-whenever Janine shoots the camera a fourth-wall-breaking, deadpan aside on Abbott’s mockumentary-style set.Īnd yet, there’s something undeniable that fuses Quinta and Janine together-something beyond the manufactured bond of actress and character. As Quinta, her voice dips a few keys lower her spine loosens her eyelids grow heavier, though with self-assurance rather than lethargy. But it’s Brunson’s body language that best illustrates the shift between the person and her creation: As Janine, she seems almost to effervesce, to buzz at a frequency higher than the determined but depleted teachers who flank her. For one thing, the two adhere to different wardrobes: As Quinta, her style vacillates between comfy-chic and curve-hugging glam, outfits she can wear when she’s “off to do tiny hot girl things.” (Brunson stands just around five feet tall.) As Janine, she favors budget-friendly riffs on-as one Abbott character points out in the series’s 10th episode-Mr. Quinta Brunson is not Janine Teagues, though you’d be hard-pressed to convince her Abbott Elementary students otherwise.
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