'Abbott Elementary's Chris Perfetti Is Adjusting to Success One Day at a Time

As the smash-hit workplace comedy Abbott Elementary prepares to say goodbye for a third season, at least one of its stars is already planning to enjoy their summer break to the fullest. In previous years, Chris Perfetti would have been hunting for a new job, but the 35-year-old actor tells me that he's in a

The Big Picture

  • Chris Perfetti is enjoying a rare break with a job waiting for him after Abbott Elementary 's success.
  • High school was a stage for Perfetti, where he first unlocked his love for acting.
  • Trusting in Abbott Elementary 's writers, Perfetti has enjoyed navigating his character Jacob Hill's developments in Season 3.

As the smash-hit workplace comedy Abbott Elementary prepares to say goodbye for a third season, at least one of its stars is already planning to enjoy their summer break to the fullest. In previous years, Chris Perfetti would have been hunting for a new job, but the 35-year-old actor tells me that he's in a somewhat unprecedented place in his career right now. "I have never had a year of my life where I knew I had a job waiting for me," Perfetti reveals, "and one of the many gifts of Abbott has been that."

With filming in the rearview for the time being, there are almost no traces of his Abbott character still visible when Perfetti sits down for a chat over Zoom from his Brooklyn residence, sporting the growth of a beard that the show itself referenced with a closing credits joke this season. Whenever he becomes more animated and starts talking with his hands, I notice little yellow-and-black smiley faces painted on his nails. But he also just so happens to be wearing a black baseball hat embossed with the Abbott logo, and while he does admit that he gets more recognized from the show now, the "vast majority" of interactions he has fall on the positive side, even as he acknowledges that some might be intimidated to approach him in person. "It takes a lot of guts to go up to somebody you don't know," Perfetti points out.

Abbott Elementary
TV-PGComedy

A workplace comedy centered around a group of dedicated teachers - and an oblivious principal - in a Philadelphia public school where, despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life.

Release Date December 7, 2021 Cast Quinta Brunson , Tyler James Williams , Janelle James , Lisa Ann Walter , Sheryl Lee Ralph , Chris Perfetti , William Stanford Davis , Courtney Taylor Main Genre Comedy Seasons 3

School Was a Struggle for Chris Perfetti — Until He Fell in Love With Acting

In terms of his own beginnings, Perfetti seemingly had no such trepidation about putting on a show for strangers. Growing up in Webster, New York, an experience the actor describes as "a boring and predictable trajectory in terms of life," he initially had ambitions that transcended any career. In other words, wanting to be the center of attention was Perfetti's medium of choice. "I wanted to entertain people. I was fascinated by people." By his own admission, however, one person went out of their way to set him on a different path. "It really took an English teacher in high school to hand me a Tennessee Williams play for me to be disabused of my old notion of what I thought being an actor would be," Perfetti says. It was a turning point that he describes as being cosmic, or perhaps even karmic, looking back.

Perfetti also considers it "utterly bizarre" that he's playing a teacher on TV now, given his experience as a student at Webster Schroeder High School. The process of learning was difficult, and he struggled with retaining things he needed to understand. "School, for me, was a runway. It was a stage. It was a social setting, and I gave a lot of teachers hell," he admits. But then I ask if acting unlocked a different part of his brain that hadn't successfully been tapped into before, and whether it started the moment he was handed that Tennessee Williams play. "Absolutely. It was just about finding the key."

Once he began attending drama school at the Conservatory of Theater at SUNY Purchase, Perfetti was spending hours in the library, poring over subjects like daily life in turn-of-the-century Russia. "I could tell you more about what it means to exist in that than a lot of things that I should know." These days, he considers himself like a "kid in a candy store in a museum" when it comes to absorbing as much information as he can — although he confesses his current interest lies more with documentaries rather than scripted TV shows. "The younger part of me, that maybe didn't retain it all then, is now infinitely fascinated."

Chris Perfetti Was Playing Darker Roles Before 'Abbott Elementary'

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By the time Perfetti's own career in television began, he wasn't really being offered the types of roles we might associate him with most — characters he's described in the past as being "darker, brooding, troubled, and tragic." In 2014, he joined the ensemble of NBC's short-lived pirate series Crossbones, starring John Malkovich and Claire Foy; the following year, he had a recurring part as Brady in the HBO dramedy Looking, a role which he reprised for the sequel film in 2016. When asked about the parts he was landing prior to Abbott, Perfetti says that having those darker aspects on display is an aspect of film and television that he's making peace with. "You really cannot hide from the camera. The camera picks up everything; it really knows your essence and your soul." For some reason, he adds, it was easier for him to tap into those parts of himself before AbbottElementary came along — but then he had a chance to read creator and star Quinta Brunson's pilot script, a mockumentary about a group of teachers at a Philadelphia public school, and everything changed.

"I remember thinking, 'If anybody has the guts to make this the way that she envisioned it, and leaves those jokes in, and dials up the specificity of this place and these circumstances and these people, that would be totally special and totally great,'" Perfetti says. "I knew reading it that there was an abandon in her comedy. She doesn't really care if we think it's funny or not, and that's the kind of writing that I'm attracted to." It was also an approach Perfetti himself had to take after being cast as eighth-grade history teacher Jacob Hill, a role that the actor describes as having "an incredible kinship" to, even while he asserts some distance between himself and the character. "It doesn't mean that I'm playing Chris, but you can't really lie, especially if you're going to do 22 episodes, and hopefully for more than one year."

Joining Abbott Elementary was a change of pace in more ways than one, but it was a process that Perfetti's theater past partially helped prepare him for, particularly concerning the show's setup during shooting. "We do these long takes where there are three cameras rolling at all times, and that lets you forget, for a moment, that you're shooting a TV show." Long production days are also easier to adjust to, as it turns out. "The experience I'm most used to and comfortable with is a play [that] starts and doesn't stop for two hours. Rhythmically, that helps." What proves most handy in keeping Perfetti mentally locked in during Abbott's filming schedule, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the character he's playing. "We are making our show up until the very last second, and that requires a real naïveté and playfulness, a kind of abandon and enthusiasm about what something could be, and that's who Jacob is."

Chris Perfetti Has Learned To Trust the 'Abbott Elementary' Writers

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Abbott Elementary's third season has proven to be a shakeup for the ensemble of fictional teachers in more ways than one. Janine (Brunson) decides to take a position working for the school district, trying to enact change on a bigger level even as it plunges her into a completely different atmosphere. Meanwhile, Jacob, realizing he's become unhappy in his longtime relationship with Zach (Larry Owens), is doing everything possible to try and get his boyfriend to break up with him so he doesn't have to broach the subject. It's a hilarious escalation of passive-aggressive behavior that culminates in the couple officially splitting in Episode 5, aptly titled "Breakup," but Perfetti had some initial trepidation about the decision to have Jacob and Zach mutually call it quits. "We're gonna lose the unmitigated genius of Larry Owens. Are we sure we want to do that?" Brunson was the first person to ease his concerns, and according to Perfetti, this season won't be the last time viewers will get to see Zach on the show.

Personal struggles for these characters, the actor adds, are a part of what makes Abbott so successful, and he loved being able to play Jacob without some of his strongest relationships to lean on this season, between the aforementioned breakup and Janine's district job keeping her at a distance from the school. With those absences, there's been room for different and surprising dynamics to emerge in Season 3, like Jacob's unexpected friendship with his new roommate, fellow teacher Melissa Schemmenti (Lisa Ann Walter). Putting the teachers of Abbott in situations they never envisioned themselves in, Perfetti says, is rich territory to mine for good storytelling. "If we don't show [these characters] as real people, whatever message you derive out of the show is harder to tell. We write jokes so that you'll laugh, so that you'll care about them, so that when bad things happen to them, you'll feel something."

That attitude didn't come easily to Perfetti at first, and he admits that he didn't necessarily trust the Abbott writers' room at the very beginning. The person that trust initially lay with? Brunson herself. "I trusted the way that Quinta wrote, and that she wanted me to do it." As the Abbott creator brought in more voices, the aforementioned breakneck pace of production necessitated a sink-or-swim mentality, not to mention a willingness from Perfetti to work in collaboration with the people that Brunson invited into the room where it all happens. "There is a beautiful camaraderie and symbiosis now that is necessary just because of how quickly we make this show," Perfetti says when asked about his experience working with Abbott's creative team. "There are a lot of checks and balances on whether the thing feels truthful and whether it's funny. It's their job to make it funny, and it's my job to make it truthful."

Season 3 of Abbott Elementary, like many other shows this year, had a specific obstacle to navigate in the aftermath of 2023's SAG-AFTRA strike. It was a curveball that impacted the overall length of the season — which only had 14 episodes to tell its story rather than the originally planned 22 — but Perfetti praises Brunson and the show's writers for turning their unexpected limitation into a different kind of storytelling opportunity, before teasing a detail about the season finale that is sure to have the audience buzzing after the episode airs later tonight. "Quinta distilled and concentrated the anxiety and the humor of this year, and there's a real cliffhanger in the finale that punched me in the gut when I read it and when I saw it."

When Abbott Elementary first premiered in December 2021, almost no one could have foreseen the overnight success story it would have become — well, almost no one. Perfetti almost preemptively winces when I ask him when he knew the show would be a hit, as if worried I'll judge him for his answer. "Don't hate me, but... I knew from the jump. I knew reading [Quinta's] script." Three years in and four Emmy wins later (out of a total of fifteen nominations), the success Abbott has achieved is something Perfetti admits he's still gradually coming to terms with. "Every day that I have had this job has been a new pinch-me moment. I'm leaving tomorrow to go be on Jimmy Kimmel. I can't believe that I am uttering that phrase." Simultaneously, though, he doesn't want the phenomenon of Abbott to become his new normal. "I've lived in New York for 15 years, I'm back here in Brooklyn now, and I don't intend to live my life any differently."

What's Next for Chris Perfetti?

In terms of what's next, Perfetti is poised to take a page out of any Abbott student's book and enjoy some time off this summer. Previous years have seen him returning to the theater between filming seasons of Abbott; in 2023, he starred in the off-Broadway production of King James alongside Glenn Davis, in a limited run directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon. Stepping back on a stage, Perfetti says, is a feeling akin to coming home, a conduit for what he can't do in film and television, but right now, he has no immediate plans to return. Instead, he cryptically references "a small thing, if folks happen to be in New York City this summer, that I hope is going to happen." Once he films that appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, the actor tells me he's heading back to his hometown in upstate New York — the place where it all started — for some welcome downtime with friends and family.

"One of the many beautiful things of Abbott is that I'm making good on this fantasy that I would get to act every day," Perfetti muses, when I ask him what feels most different about this particular point in his career. "I never really imagined that I would get to be an actor every day, and I never imagined that it would be a part of my life to know that I had a job waiting for me. That's a new thing that I'm contending with." Taking it one day at a time is how he's choosing to navigate this entire journey — from coming up through the theater to being part of a major sitcom's success story — but even though he plays a teacher, Perfetti's still living in the mindset of a willing student. "I am learning, more and more, how to do it for me."

The Abbott Elementary Season 3 finale premieres Wednesday, May 22 on ABC and is available to stream the next day on Hulu.

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