For Chris Perfetti, ‘tragic circumstances' are comedy gold
“I’m so excited for this!” Chris Perfetti says as he approaches the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Our greeting is drowned out by a cacophony of nearby construction and clusters of energetic children on field trips shuffling down the pathway — in the distance, a row of yellow school buses that snake the perimeter stand guard.
Perfetti, in monochromatic black sweats, T-shirt and baseball cap, is just four steps into the rotunda, under the shadow of the museum’s famous Three Graces statue by Julia Bracken Wendt, when he is recognized.
“Excuse me, are you Chris Perfetti ... from ‘Abbott Elementary’?” a student from Lawndale High School asks bashfully.
“Yeah,” Perfetti says with a smile.
“Oh, wow! I love that show,” the teenager says, sharing an enthusiastic look with his classmate. “Our AP bio class is here on a field trip. We’re seniors in high school. I’m sorry to bother you. This is just so cool.”
“I was in AP bio for about a month,” Perfetti says. “Congratulations. You’re so close to graduating. Just a couple of months to go. Stay motivated.”
The scenario playing out in real life is something Perfetti’s “Abbott Elementary” character, the lovably corny, socially awkward history teacher Jacob Hill, would definitely freak out over. Teenagers thinking he’s cool? He’d run to the teacher’s lounge to broadcast the news.
Created by Quinta Brunson, the mockumentary comedy follows a group of teachers trying to give their students the education they deserve at an underfunded primary school in West Philadelphia. The series features an ensemble cast — Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Lisa Ann Walter, William Stanford Davis and Sheryl Lee Ralph — in which every member delivers scene-stealing laughs. But Perfetti, who had performed mostly onstage in New York and in small roles on TV before being cast on the sitcom, has held his own — making Jacob, “Abbott’s” equally sincere and absurd white liberal do-gooder, a fan favorite and meme king. During the show’s post-Oscars episode last month, for example, which looked at whether the school’s namesake was racist, Perfetti delivers a master class in instant GIF-ication, passionately shouting at one of Abbott’s descendants, “Where were you on Jan. 6?!”
But it doesn’t stop there. The casual disclosure of Jacob’s idiosyncrasies across three seasons has brought hilarious depth to what could easily be a mere caricature of a well-intentioned ally. He’s not the biggest fan of Chris Pratt. He admits to having applied to Morehouse, a historically Black college. He suspects his gluten intolerance is internalized white guilt. He is awkward and overeager to please, but also a phenomenal friend with a heart of gold. And a good teacher.
“It was easy to make Jacob annoying without any heart or ground to stand on, but in his audition, Chris really brought more heart to the character and warmth and honesty, which, to me, was more important than being funny and nailing the jokes,” Brunson says.
Perfetti offers this explanation for his understanding of the character: “(Brunson) had an idea for who these characters were, but also gave over permission for those people to just be those people. I trust that she saw in me where it could go, the kind anchoring characteristics of what Jacob might be. At the end of the day, we’re trying to dupe you into thinking that this is real life. You need to have characters that seem real and flawed and multifaceted and ridiculous, otherwise, we won’t really care about their struggles. It’s way more interesting for me to play a real person than a cartoon version of a person. The comedy in Jacob is sort of baked into really tragic circumstances; I kind of obsess myself with Jacob’s fears and desires and hope they’ll come out funny.”
At 35, Perfetti radiates the same curiosity and enthusiasm Jacob would while wandering through the museum’s Dinosaur Hall. As he cranes his neck to marvel at Thomas, the 34-foot-tall Tyrannosaurus
rex that holds court in the middle of the room, I ask if he was a kid who went through a dinosaur phase. “I would venture to say I’m still obsessed,” he says, making his way toward a massive triceratops skull nearby. “I’m watching this documentary series narrated by Morgan Freeman. It’s called ‘Life on This Planet.’ My Netflix queue is embarrassing. You would think I was a 90-year-old man. But the series is amazing. It’s all about like the history of life on our planet and I’m on an episode right now where he’s talking about if this huge meteor hadn’t wiped these dudes out, we would not be here and that’s probably something that I should already know from school, but it’s like amazing to hear it again.”
That inquisitiveness didn’t necessarily make Perfetti a great student, however. “I just couldn’t be bothered. School was a really mixed bag for me. The process of absorbing something to regurgitate it, I couldn’t find a way into that. That’s why being here now is so amazing because, in my 30s, I feel like I have such a thirst for this.”
His study habits as a performer were more thoughtful, because the reward was in the self-discovery.
“I had a drama teacher who said that theater is not therapy,” Perfetti says. “And I remember understanding why she was saying that. But to be fair, it is kind of my therapy. I mean, therapy is also my therapy. But acting feels like the conduit through which I can experience being a human on this planet and understand what that is. And it is the greatest high I have ever felt. ... You kind of get to become an expert on everything. I remember when I was in drama school, being in the library and studying daily life in turnof-the-century Russia — it’s like, ‘What the (expletive) am I doing?” I ate it up because I wanted to do it as opposed to just a couple years before where I didn’t see my purpose.”
It all works to make Perfetti a scene partner who never fails to surprise, says Williams, who plays Jacob’s more sedate colleague, Gregory.
“He preps everything like he does with theater. He comes into rehearsal with his own idea of the melody of the scene, then he waits to see what others are doing around him to refine it down,” Williams says. “But the energy that is Jacob is there from the start. I need time to ramp up, but Chris is already locked in from the first rehearsal. The best way I can describe it is, when I work with Chris, it feels like a jazz band that is just so perfectly in tune.”