Everyone Wanted a Visitor’s Pass to Abbott Elementary

For most people, the idea of going back to school sounds like a nightmare — unless you’re a celebrity trying to get cast on Abbott Elementary. It’s become a regular occurrence on the red carpet and social media for stars to pitch themselves to the ABC sitcom: Keke Palmer told E! News two years ago that she’d love to play Ava or Janine’s sister (the latter role has already been filled by Ayo Edebiri), or a potential love interest for Gregory, while Bette Midler had something more specific in mind, posting online that she wanted to play Melissa Schemmenti’s mother: “If you see Quinta Brunson, please tell her.”

Getting a guest spot on the show isn’t as simple as just asking, though — the story always comes first for the Abbott team. “Traditionally, we weren’t a show that leaned on cameos because we wanted the viewers to get lost in the world of the show,” explains Emmy-winning casting director Wendy O’Brien. “Now that people know the show, we can have more fun populating it with familiar faces.”

“We’ve had so many people who are just like, ‘I don’t care what it is, I wanna be on it. No role too big or too small,” adds casting director Chris Gehrt, who works closely with O’Brien on the show.

In order to organize the growing list of names, the casting team has an ongoing “Love Abbott” list of those who have expressed a desire to be on the show, whether online, through agents, or to Brunson herself. “During awards season, Quinta Brunson was at everything, so I can only imagine how many people come up to her that we don’t even know about,” says O’Brien. “I’d love to get into her cell phone and see who’s there.”

Those with personal ties to the sitcom’s setting naturally get priority among the requests, but it doesn’t limit their casting pool whatsoever. “You’ll be surprised how many famous people come out of Philadelphia,” explains Gehrt. O’Brien adds, “It’s always very conscious. You wouldn’t wanna waste a big Philly celebrity like Gritty on just any role.”

Season three made the most of the show’s popularity from the very first episode, featuring an appearance from a trio of Philly sports celebrities to a finale that brought together several of the season’s recurring guest roles, with an Oscar-nominated (and Emmy-submitted) walk-on in between. O’Brien and Gehrt broke down how the guest stars of season three obtained a visitor’s pass to Abbott Elementary.

One of the season’s most surprising cameos was Bradley Cooper as a student’s show-and-tell guest. According to Gehrt, an appearance in the show’s post-Oscars episode was the best-case scenario to get Cooper on board, since, “Cooper’s a great actor, he could transform into another character, but he would have to do a couple episodes for the Bradley Cooper to wear off.”

The post-Oscars cold open “was going to be an immediate lead-in, no commercial,” adds O’Brien. “Who’s the conduit from one to the other? In so many ways Bradley was the ultimate dream because he had been nominated for an Oscar that night, then smash cut to him at Abbott.”

That isn’t to say it was easy making that dream a reality in the midst of a busy awards season.

“We had a few variations of the Bradley character,” explains Gerht. “We were holding part of the story to see who it was schedule-wise.” But Cooper, who had told Brunson he was a fan of the show, “jumped through a lot of hoops to come. He really made a lot of effort to show up.” And after he filmed, he headed straight to Santa Barbara to accept an award for Maestro.

The three Eagles appeared in “Career Day” together but weren’t initially cast as a package deal. Jalen Hurts’s cameo was years in the making; his agent pitched him to the Abbott team about two years ago because he’s a fan of the show. As for now-retired Jason Kelce, O’Brien had cast him before for other projects, including It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and he’s “just pretty much always up for everything.” They rounded out the trio with Brandon Graham, who was the longest-tenured Eagle who “wasn’t too shy.”

Their schedules finally lined up during a practice week where Hurts, Kelce, and Graham were able to Zoom in for their cameo. It was a live feed from the Philadelphia Eagles office to the Warner Bros. lot where the players were “really interacting with the kids and the cast.” O’Brien jokes that she’s since became a pseudo-agent for Kelce, with people reaching out to her on how to get a hold of him: “He’s very popular.”

A sweetheart on The Other Two and a sweetheart at the school-district office, Segarra always “floated to the top” of O’Brien and Gehrt’s list of who could embody Manny. Because he was a recurring role, it was a bigger commitment, but one Segarra, as a fan of the show, was eager to make, both initially and when he was asked back for more episodes throughout the season.

During the initial casting, O’Brien and Gehrt had no idea Manny would evolve into a potential love interest for Janine this season and suspect that it might have grown into that after Segarra was cast. Gehrt explains, “You need someone who’s likable enough to go head-to-head with Gregory. It wasn’t much of a challenge for Segarra — he did it perfectly.” As for his relatively towering frame, O’Brien says it was not a factor at all for Janine’s next crush: “I think everybody’s tall to her.”

For his three-episode arc, Keegan-Michael Key was promoted from substitute teacher to Janine’s new boss at the school district and thankfully avoided mispronouncing everyone’s name, despite probably being tired from the night before. Gehrt explains, “He was working with the NFL as the host for the Super Bowl [Honors] and it was tough scheduling. He had to fly out to be with us Monday morning to film.”

The sitcom princess, who played Ashley on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, secured her spot in the Abbott world as Ava’s former sorority sister and current rival via the more traditional route. “She auditioned and just won the role,” says O’Brien “They loved her, and she was a dream on set.” Gerht adds, “Quinta is a big sitcom fan and always throws some respect to sitcom actors she grew up watching.”

Another sitcom icon, Cree Summer’s entryway into Abbott was through one of the writers, Morgan Murphy, and she was able to bring her signature style to the role of the school’s new librarian. “The team knew that Cree and her hat were an item,” O’Brien explains, “and of course it was hilarious when Barbara took a jab at it.”

Questlove’s cameo was teased throughout “2 Ava 2 Fest” as Ava promised that he would come perform at the festival — she allegedly helped form the Roots and left before she could “Yoko Ono” them. Brunson and Questlove, who share Philly roots, have been friends for a while, and when the team needed a DJ who would be down to clown, he answered the call, “moving mountains” to make it to the set from the East Coast. “Questlove is someone who parents and the kids can all get behind,” O’Brien explains, “and he came through for us onscreen and off.”

Lana Condor doesn’t really do network TV; she had a brief two-episode role on BoJack Horseman and starred in Boo, Bitch, but nothing from a three-letter network. The team originally had a “Lana Condor type” placeholder in the script for Gregory’s love interest, but they never expected her to be available to film. O’Brien decided to ask Brunson if they should just try reaching out: “Her agent wasn’t sure. By the time I got to Lana, she was like, ‘Heck yeah, I’m in.’”

Abbott Elementary’s hottest casting call was the “Mother’s Day” episode, which featured a number of performers at a drag brunch, including two recognizable Drag Race alums in the form of season-13 winner Symone and All Stars season-five winner Shea Coulée. “We saw a lot of queens. Everyone had input on it. We had worked on a movie [The Bitch Who Stole Christmas] with a lot of people from Drag Race. Production knew people. Quinta knew people,” explains Gerht. “It was cool to see because we asked for special tricks like, ‘Can you do karate kicks? Can you do flips? What can we put that’s unique about you into the episode?’ We had a karate queen in there.” (You can spot her in a pink sequined suit doing kicks as Janine discovers Kevin Hart is not her father.)

Kevin Hart’s cameo was teased throughout “Mother’s Day.” After several tweets and a Venmo request from Janine, Hart called her, Maury style, to set the record straight: He’s not the father. Hart’s cameo reportedly took one take; he knew how to embody the fictional version of himself fully (he’d done that before) and how to squeeze them into his busy schedule. “He was shooting a movie and doing the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor while on the East Coast. We found a window when he was available,” explains Gehrt. “His manager said, ‘Don’t worry, he’ll rock it out in one take.’ We were like, ‘Maybe another take for safety,’ but he was a total pro.”