Interview: Chris Perfetti on Pairing Up with Lisa Ann Walter, Shakespeare and What Inspires Jacob on ‘Abbott Elementary’

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Chris Perfetti was a familiar face to TV fans long before landing his biggest role yet in 2021 with Abbott Elementary. Throughout the past decade, he popped up in a handful of television shows, including Looking, The Night Of, and In the Dark. During that same period, he found success on the New York stage, working at the Public Theater, Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte, and on Broadway in revivals of Picnic and Six Degrees of Separation. 

But Abbott Elementary has put him in front of a larger audience than ever before. Upon its premiere, the show was an instant success, garnering the kinds of across-the-board critical respect and audience affection that network comedy hadn’t seen in years. A passion project of creator and star Quinta Brunson, the show documents the lives of the teachers at the titular fictional Philadelphia public school. Perfetti plays Jacob Hill – a well meaning yet overly zealous educator with an indefatigably positive attitude (which his coworkers constantly try to fatigue). 

As the third season closed, and ahead of filming for the quickly-announced fourth season, Perfetti sat down to talk to us about what working on a firmly established show has been like. He also tells us about how the show dealt with the understandable delays due to last year’s strikes and what it was like to shake up some of the show’s expected inter-character dynamics.

Chris Perfetti: You think they would’ve changed her voice by now. “Recording in progress.”

Cody Dericks: She’s a star. We’re going to let her live.

CP: Can’t I be the new voice of Zoom’s recording in progress?

CD: Definitely a gig that’s worthy of your talents, absolutely. All right, well, thank you so much for joining. My name is Cody, I’m with AwardsWatch, and I’m really excited to be talking with Chris Perfetti from Abbott Elementary. Chris, thank you so much for joining me.

CP: Thanks, Cody. It’s great to be with you.

CD: Of course. So we are wrapping up this season of Abbott Elementary, and congrats on another great season. Is there anything off the top of your head that stood out as new or different about this season compared to the last two?

CP: Yeah, a great deal was new. How much time do we have? Obviously the strikes threw this beautiful wrench into what we had planned for this season, so we got to throw this curveball at the audience and say, “You guys fill in the gaps as to why we’re starting late.”

And plot-wise, a lot had gone down in between when we last saw this beautiful bunch. It was, as I’ve experienced the show, a trend of trying to subvert people’s expectations. And when you think you know who these characters are and what this show was going to do, I feel like Quinta very quickly tries to disabuse you of that notion. And so obviously Janine’s character was not in the school. And a lot of relationships I feel like were just ripped away from each other, which was fun. And particularly for Jacob, so that was, as an actor, really great.

I don’t know when this is being released, so I don’t know what I can say in terms of the end. But I’ll just say that it was really enjoyable to see and traverse Jacob winning a bit this year. I feel like we’ve set up this character to always be putting his foot in his mouth and to be tripping over his words. And I think it was interesting to Quinta and our writers and our producers and certainly me to see what happens if Jacob gets what he wants a bit, and so that was neat.

And similarly, I would say that about every character. I feel like we saw the flip side of what you know about them, and I feel like it’s inherent in this documentary mockumentary genre that we have to dupe you a little bit into believing that maybe this is actually being shot somewhere in a school and these are real people. And so I feel like we are voraciously trying to avoid these characters becoming two-dimensional or cartoonish. And to be fair, I think Quinta did a remarkable job of crafting them as real people from the jump, but this year I feel like we showed people the dark underbelly of some of these characters.

CD: Well, speaking of switching up interactions and dynamics, earlier in the season, Jacob and Melissa became unlikely roommates. Can you tell me what it’s like being able to spend more time with the incredible, iconic Lisa Ann Walter?

CP: It is incredible. It is iconic. It is Lisa Ann Walter. It’s so great. Look, these people are like my family now, and so I have been longing to have the experience with an ensemble that I find doing plays in TV and film. And so there’s just a shorthand and a trust now that we can really just try and tickle each other and make each other break. And there’s an unbelievable thing that happens I feel like for me, when you are unburdened by the pressure of not knowing whether you can trust your scene partner. Lisa is a remarkable actor. She is just an incredible thing to behold. I love being in scenes with her.

I thought this was a really brilliant way to do what we are constantly trying to do in the show, which is make these little pairings that maybe we haven’t seen before. And again, the beauty of what Quinta did I feel like is make seven very distinctly different characters, and so really any combination of them is a recipe for comedy, hopefully. But it could have been anybody, Jacob could have moved in with any of those people and it would’ve been absolutely weird. So it was a lot of fun.

CD: Season four maybe?

CP: Hey!

CD: Well, speaking of your craft, here’s where I get to show my true Chris Perfetti credentials. I actually saw you do The Tempest at Shakespeare in the Park a decade ago. And you have such a prolific stage career,  I’m curious, are there any aspects of theater acting that you’re able to bring to television comedy, which is such a different medium?

CP: It is, it is. I’m so glad that you saw The Tempest. I actually just ran into Sam Waterston at an opening of a play last night, so that’s wild. I think if you had asked me in our second season, I would have been…It was still sort of nebulous and still forming, but it feels very clear to me now the ways in which they inform each other. Obviously, I feel way more at home doing a play, it just feels like acting to me. That’s how I trained and that’s how I started most of my career. And TV and film was always a bit elusive, but the more you do it, the more you just figure out, how can I take what I like about that and use it to inform this?

Obviously on stage, the actor is just so much more in control of the storytelling. It’s really on you to guide the audience through that experience. And in TV and film, it’s an editor’s job to guide people through that experience. And a writer and a director, but the actor I feel like has to be way more malleable and in service to a larger story when they are on camera.

And I feel like again, this format, this mockumentary, I feel like it borrows a lot from the stage. We do these incredibly long takes where there’s just three cameras rolling, and you essentially have an audience and you get to forget for a moment that you’re shooting a show. And obviously this is a great big ensemble that I feel like the show really comes alive when we do these big scenes where everybody’s in them and there’s many instruments playing, and that feels like a play. And then I guess just technically there are moments of the show that are very presentational. Sometimes we’re talking to the camera, sometimes we are breaking that fourth wall. And I feel like if I hadn’t learned how to develop new plays, I wouldn’t really know how to find what my piece of this story is. So…I don’t know.

CD: I never thought of it, but I guess Abbott Elementary does have Shakespearean asides, if you will, and these talking heads. It’s exactly the same.

CP: That’s right. That’s certainly how Jacob thinks of them. I think Jacob thinks that this documentary is about him and that he’s stolen away for a moment of revealing with the camera crew.

CD: “Much Ado About Abbott,” I don’t know, there’s something there. Now speaking to your creation of Jacob, did you have any specific teachers growing up that you are drawing inspiration from at all, or is this a totally what’s on the page creation?

CP: I would be lying if I didn’t say that a bunch of people came to mind, but it was really important for me to not…I guess I’ll preface this by saying that school, elementary school and middle school and high school were a bit of a mixed bag for me. I don’t have a lot of fond or formative memories from that time. It felt like something, it was social, but I feel like my mind was really more focused on other things during that time. And so I don’t really remember a lot of the teachers that I had. Or I remember them all, but I don’t remember them enough to draw aspects of their personality.

And every actor knows that to play a teacher is like playing drunk. There is no way to play a teacher. You can play a person who happens to go to work as a teacher, and that ends up being the easiest part. And the more complex and difficult part was trying to obsess myself with the things that I think Jacob wants, and his desires and his fears about the world. And then weirdly, a lot of the magic just happens for you or gets put on you. There’s something about when they put that lanyard on me, there’s something about when I step into my classroom, it just feels…We all have that universal experience of having gone through that time. And so you know what a teacher does, you know how a teacher talks and how they behave. And so no offense to my former teachers, but Jacob is not based on you.

CD: I’m sure they’re bragging about you regardless.

CP: I doubt it, in fact.

CD: Well, speaking of your classroom, there’s an old adage in showbiz: “never work with children or animals,” and this show has maybe the largest ensemble of kids I’ve ever seen in a TV show. Can you tell me just a little bit about what it’s like working with so many young, young actors?

CP: Yes, I think people would be surprised to know that the set of Abbott is not as chaotic as it seems. We capture these moments of chaos where the kids get to go wild, but it’s really a well-oiled machine. And they are, for the most part, unbelievably professional and interested in what we’re doing, and more professional than we are, I feel like, than  the adults on set, much of the time. It’s incredible.

I think that adage, I get why it’s a thing, but I am finding, just to be completely corny, that the kids are an incredible gift to me as an actor. Because in the moments where we’re not rolling, their proximity to play and fun and make believe is exactly what I feel like most actors are trying to channel on a set. And so it’s very easy for them. They don’t have any of the bullshit that gets in the way of throwing yourself into something, believing it wholeheartedly. And so, yeah, they are this beautiful reminder of what we are all doing there, and they’re just absolutely adorable and hilarious. So yeah, it’s fun.

CD: Well, unfortunately, I’m approaching the end of my time here with you, Chris. This has been fabulous. But do you have anything on the docket coming up, non-Abbott, that you’re excited about?

CP: Yeah! Things that I can tell you about? No!

CD: Okay!

CP: Yeah, I think we have a shorter break this year obviously because we started later, and so I’m very excited to go back to work very soon. I know that what we’ve got cooking for season four is going to be absolutely unhinged. And so I have some cool stuff going on over the summer, but I’m mostly just excited to get back with my family and shoot more of this show.

CD: Well, I can’t wait to see what else you got in store for us at Abbott. And again, thank you so much for your time, Chris.

CP: Thanks, Cody. It’s great to be with you.

CD: You too.

Chris Perfetti is Emmy eligible in the category of Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Abbott Elementary. Season three of Abbott Elementary is available to stream on ABC.com and Hulu.

Photo: Disney/Pamela Littky