{"id":307774,"date":"2025-11-22T21:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T21:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307774\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T21:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T21:30:07","slug":"janelle-james-on-why-abbott-elementary-had-trouble-casting-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307774\/","title":{"rendered":"Janelle James On Why ‘Abbott Elementary’ Had Trouble Casting Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFive seasons into Abbott Elementary<\/a>, Janelle James<\/a> has seen a whole new class of young actors come into their talent.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Golden Globe nominee explained that there aren\u2019t \u201ca lot of dark-skinned Black kids\u201d with agents, which made it initially difficult casting the ABC<\/a> sitcom, which is set in a predominantly Black elementary school in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I remember, in our early seasons, they had to go find kids,\u201d she said on Vulture\u2019s Good One<\/a> podcast. \u201cThere aren\u2019t a lot of dark-skinned Black kids in LA who are in acting. Acting, especially as a kid, is a very expensive thing. You have to have a parent that is free to take you around and do auditions and stuff. And that doesn\u2019t really exist in the Black community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJames continued, \u201cSo, we had to go find them. A lot of them aren\u2019t professional actors. Now they are, because a lot of them have grown up with the show, and I think that\u2019s amazing. But a lot of them had never been on a set or anything before. I mean, we were learning together, is how I felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress who plays Principal Ava previously raved to Deadline that the Quinta Brunson<\/a>-created show\u2019s Season 5 renewal<\/a> is \u201camazing at a time of shows going to three seasons and then sometimes without even a real ending.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLela Hoffmeister in \u2018Abbott Elementary\u2019 (Gilles Mingasson\/Disney)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re trucking along and the fact that we, especially Quinta, have done this through so many different calamities that people don\u2019t think about it. You shouldn\u2019t think about it, because you\u2019re just being entertained, but we\u2019ve done this show through the pandemic, strikes, fires in LA, personal strife,\u201d explained James. \u201cI think the show keeps getting better [and it] is a testament to what amazing work we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five seasons into Abbott Elementary, Janelle James has seen a whole new class of young actors come into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[13279,1855,88,159368,92],"class_list":["post-307774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-abbott-elementary","tag-abc","tag-entertainment","tag-janelle-james","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}