Yahoo Lifestyle Tyler James Williams On Making His Directorial Debut On ‘Abbott Elementary’ & Preserving The Network Comedy
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from Wednesday night’s episode of Abbott Elementary.
Gregory Eddie is a bit absent from Wednesday night’s episode of Abbott Elementary, which sees Mr. Morton (Jerry Minor) trying to entice the rest of the teachers to help facilitate the science fair, in part because Tyler James Williams spent this episode behind the camera instead.
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The actor made his directorial debut with Episode 413 after toying with the idea of it “since I was a child, really,” Williams told Deadline.
“I think the first time I got interested in directing is when we did Everybody Hates Chris and Jerry Levine, who was our producing director, would just talk shots with me, and would let me look behind the camera and see how things worked and really educated me on the process, not from the perspective of a child, but from the perspective of an artist. That’s where it piqued my interest,” he said.
In the interview below, Williams opens up about his experience directing for the first time and his goals to direct more network comedy in the future.
DEADLINE: Tell me more about where your interest in directing came from.
TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS: It’s something I’ve been thinking about and kicking around since I was a child, really. I think the first time I got interested in directing is when we did Everybody Hates Chris and Jerry Levine, who was our producing director, would just talk shots with me, and would let me look behind the camera and see how things worked and really educated me on the process, not from the perspective of a child, but from the perspective of an artist. That’s where it piqued my interest. But I think I was waiting for a perfect world scenario to do my first episode of TV, and there’s a really special glue that’s at Abbott Elementary. We just speak symbiotically with one another. All the departments work really well together, and then particularly myself and camera department work really well together. So this field felt like a good first place to get started. I could be supported in the ways that I needed to be, but could also have a really good shorthand with the people that I needed for my first run at it.
DEADLINE: What did those conversations look like to have you direct an episode this season?
WILLIAMS: So, at the end of last season, I went to Quinta [Brunson], and I was like, ‘Hey, I think I may want to take a shot at directing an episode.’ She immediately walked me over to Randall Einhorn and said, ‘Tyler wants to direct an episode.’ And Randall said, ‘Hell yeah.’ When we got into the season, what was interesting about it is we had to find an episode that was Gregory-light, but we never want to take away from the story by just writing it that way. … I think once they got to the science fair storyline, they realized that Gregory did not need to be as present as much, that we could run the story through Morton. Then that’s when, I guess, the decision was made that this would be a good first one to do.
DEADLINE: Abbott does have a very specific style and tone. Of course, you’ve acted on the show for four seasons, but did you experience any challenges figuring that out from a director’s perspective?
WILLIAMS: Not as much, because I live in the world itself and have spoken the visual language that is this show for four years. It felt like it was kind of second nature. But … Randall Einhorn is a documentarian’s documentarian, and there’s certain mentalities — a camera placement [or] how they’re catching things — that he definitely helped inform me on deeper than just shot, setup, shot, setup. He would point things out, and it was like, ‘Alright, you have to fall not just into the mind of the storyteller, but then of the cinematographer and the individual camera operator as well.’ But that was just kind of going further into what was already the visual language of the show.
DEADLINE: What was your favorite part of the episode to shoot?
WILLIAMS: There’s a lot of great pieces. Honestly, I had the most fun with Barbara [played by Sheryl Lee Ralph] and Jacob [Chris Perfetti] having a conversation in the gym as Morton tries to put up a sign. When I first blocked it out, it was just so reminiscent to me of this older style of comedy where you would have these bits going on in the background while something else was happening in the foreground. It felt like I could give an homage to what was a more early 2000s version of the comedy scene. It actually worked out really well the way we set it up.
DEADLINE: I’m always curious about whether actors who step into directing roles on the show they star in are more or less nervous than directing on an unfamiliar set. What was your experience in that regard?
WILLIAMS: I think it’s a combination of both. I think more nervous in prep, because these are your people. These are your peers. It took me a while to wrap my head around prep until I thought about it as like making a meal for your family. That’s what calmed me down a bit and brought the stakes down. But then I was less nervous when we got there on the day, because I know what everybody’s capable of doing … I know how to speak to each one of my castmates to get them to get to where we both know we need to get to, which was actually really nice, because we already had the shorthand. It wasn’t hard to direct them, because we played those jokes with each other in the room.
DEADLINE: How do you feel like your own experience as a child actor might’ve helped you to direct children, since they are such an integral part of Abbott?
WILLIAMS: I understand their minds. I think a lot of times as a child actor, I experienced directors who thought they needed to dumb things down for me, or talk to me like a child. And it was nice to have the experience of knowing, no, they know what they’re doing. They know. They’re just not given the words sometimes to articulate what they’re doing. I had this really beautiful moment with Lela [Hoffmeister], who plays Courtney in the episode. We’re in the science lab, and I explained to her that her character, over the course of this whole episode, is taking notes on the teachers for her experiment. Like, that’s what you’re kind of doing, scene by scene.
I watched her find her own moments in the pocket between two people talking to find the camera and take notes. That’s the type of stuff that makes me excited about the next generation of actors. That’s a smart actor who just happens to be like 12, but she’s a very smart actor. If you treat her as such, if you tell her what her through line is, what her story is here, she’ll find the moments herself. So it was really nice to not have to, I guess, dumb things down for them, and watch them flourish and thrive as artists and respect them as such.
DEADLINE: The kids on the show are so good. More generally, how is working with them? Does it make you reflect on your own experiences as a child actor at all?
WILLIAMS: It’s almost therapeutic. I guess, in a way, I don’t feel as crazy. I think a lot of times as a child, and particularly a child who was good at performing on television … sometimes you feel like the oddest ball there is. But then seeing this new generation of kids who are equally as good, who just may not have had those opportunities, and how quickly they pick things up, there’s something about it that validates my inner child, and it makes him feel a little bit less crazy. But also, there’s something really nice to being able to do it differently. I think the world that I came from was a lot harsher. Being able to approach it differently with them, make it fun, but then teach them the things that they can pick up and use for later is also very therapeutic.
DEADLINE: As a director, are there other genres or formats that interest you?
WILLIAMS: I love comedy, and if they’ll have me in Abbott, I’ll do another one, for sure. But then also exploring the other network comedies would be nice. I love network TV, specifically. I think it gets overlooked a lot of the time, and my brain thinks in comedy shots and rhythms, even in my everyday life. I’m constantly walking around going, ‘This is how we would shoot the scene that is us in the kitchen.’ So I think I will explore it at some point. Right now, when I’m signed on to a show, that show has 100% of my energy. So most of it will probably stay within the Abbott walls for now, but eventually I’ll break out and see if I can take my particular voice and enhance a show.
DEADLINE: You have worked in the industry for a long time. Were there any curveballs or anything you still really didn’t expect to happen when you stepped into the director role?
WILLIAMS: They’re always curveballs. What’s nice about having been here as long as I have is most of them I had seen before. I think it’s just a matter of what’s going to come at you … our cast is very busy and successful, which is great, but we had like seven different character conflicts throughout the episodes So scheduling was all over the place, and some of those conflicts were mine. So it was stuff like that. I can’t anticipate this happening, but now that I see it, we just have to get really efficient in shooting this. I’ve seen a lot of directors over time either thrive in that scenario or fall apart in that scenario. So I was able to kind of pick up from the things that I learned over time. There’ll always be something that comes out of left field, but I’ve seen a lot to the point where it wasn’t too disorienting.
DEADLINE: Abbott was just renewed for Season 5. This show is accomplishing something few network comedies have been able to recently. How does that feel?
WILLIAMS: I was just talking to Quinta about this and saying we’re now entering kind of uncharted territory. For me, the longest I’ve ever done on the show is four seasons. It’s really great to see. I’d like to think the network has done a great job in supporting us and giving us the room to be ourselves, and then as we churn out a product, affirm that and then give us the stability of picking us up so that we can be prepared for the next one. I’m really proud of the work that we do. I’m proud that we’ve somehow been able to maintain the quality of it. I know it’s something that you don’t see a lot. I do think that it’s those early renewals that validate and hopefully will affect other writers and showrunners and creators to look at what we’re doing here and find a way to apply it, so that the industry itself can be healthier. We can see more of this. I don’t like being the outlier here, or the the asterisk. This should be everybody.
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