The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
Assembling the Class Roster
Emmy nominee Wendy O’Brien talks filling the halls of Abbott Elementary with guest stars and child actors
Finding actors for Abbott Elementary’s coterie of impressive guest stars was no easy task for casting director Wendy O’Brien, who juggled A-list schedules, COVID-19 restrictions and child labor laws to help bring season two of the ABC sitcom to life.
After the massive critical and commercial success of season one, securing interested talent was not the problem: “Part of the joy of season two was that Abbott had already exploded,” O’Brien explains. “We were having agents and actors reaching out to us saying they were fans of the show, if there was ever anything that they could be right for.”
Creator Quinta Brunson had one actor in mind to play her character Janine’s mother, Vanetta: “Taraji [P. Henson] was a dream of Quinta’s,” O’Brien says. “But she’s extraordinarily busy. It’s not easy to nail down her schedule. When we were reaching out to her reps to gauge interest, we didn’t have dates. We knew [the episode] was coming down the line, but we didn’t have a window yet. It was a lot of moving targets. Taraji really wanted to do it and made it happen.” Henson earned an Emmy nom for guest actress in a comedy for her work.
Tony and Grammy winner Leslie Odom Jr. also joined the cast, as Draemond Winding, a former Abbott student who runs a rival charter school — a particularly difficult character to cast. “We had read a lot of really great actors. We were trying to find the tone — [for] Draemond, the goal was to not have him be comedic. He was really this straight man among those episodes, and luckily, when we reached out to check his availability, his team expressed interest,” O’Brien recalls, adding, “He nailed the tone of that character: very serious, and not unlikable, but the thorn in the paw, for sure.”
Another exciting guest star was Lauren Weedman as Kristin Marie, the younger sister of Lisa Ann Walter’s Melissa Schemmenti. “She had tested against Lisa Ann for the pilot, and so the role of Melissa was actually between those two,” admits O’Brien. “It was really fun when they wrote the role of her sister in, and we could come back to Lauren and get her on board.”
Casting Abbott also presents the significant challenge of working with scores of child actors, though season two proved easier than season one. “The great part of our child ensemble is that we had a summer break, and they come back and they’re a year older,” says O’Brien. “We didn’t have to go back to the well — [the kids] could move up into the next class and reappear in the next season.”
Still, because of COVID, “we weren’t doing live auditions,” O’Brien notes. “And usually you get to meet the families, the kids, to interact with them before the audition room. There’s a little bit more information that’s gathered before a child hits the set, but during this time, it was a bit more challenging.”