Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti explains how Jacob is 'a total 180' from his usual roles

Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti compares ABC's newest hit sitcom, and the delightful conversation around it, to something astronomical.

"Actors, if they're gonna last a week in this business, kind of have to get used to things not working out, and failure, and rejection, and negativity," the actor tells EW. "So this is very much like an eclipse. It's a dream. It's very, very cool."

Below, Perfetti, who has the role of chatty teacher Jacob, and is also currently starring in King James at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, shares what it has been like playing best friend to creator/star Quinta Brunson, pulling off real stunts in the latest episode "Desking," and seeing his develop into one of the most fascinating characters on the series.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How has it been seeing the reaction to this show?

CHRIS PERFETTI: How can I put this lightly? It's been so, so groovy. The success of the show has been a bit overwhelming to be honest. I mean, I always knew that there was something special about the show when I read it the first time obviously, and met everybody, and it's been great. I think "overwhelming" is definitely the word I would hang my hat on for right now, for the most part. It's also just been incredibly positive, and it feels really, really good. Again, I always knew that Quinta had sort of tapped into something universal just in the sense that technically the setting is a place that we're all familiar with. We all have, you know, these points of reference for that time in our lives, and so I thought that was brilliant, but I wasn't expecting the show to resonate with people as deeply as it is.

I was always really attached to how funny I thought it was, and I think it's amazing what we've been able to achieve holding both of those things at the same time. This notion that while your mouth is open, laughing, that we can kind of like shove a message down there as well. So it's been amazing. I mean look, it's not every day that you stumble upon so many great storytellers in one place, and so that is cause for continual pinching of myself.

Was this slow burn of getting to know who Jacob is always planned, or did some of the writing of that come after you all had started shooting?

I really don't know. I mean, I had long conversations with Quinta before we even shot the pilot. And so I feel like that's mostly just a function of our show and a topic that Quinta was interested in from the jump. She wrote a whole episode about whether these people are just colleagues, or whether they're family, and so I think that just naturally is going to unfold as the show goes on, but I think it's also an aspect of who Jacob is. There are many things jockeying for his attention, for first place in his mind, what he should be attacking that day. But I feel like his personal life is never really one of those. Saving the world, for lack of a better term. and his kids are usually that. So I think it's both of those things. It's just like the more time we spend with these people, the more you want to know about them. And I think it's just not who Jacob is from the get-go.

A lot of comedy has come from the things Jacob reveals about himself. Do you have a favorite line or fact about Jacob that has been shown so far on the show?

This is the brilliance and the genius of working on a show like this. As much as I think I know this person, there's a whole room of people whose job it is to concoct the backstory, and memories, and fantasies of this person as well. And so a lot of times throughout the course of making this thing I'm learning about him just as much as everybody else is. So as much as you think you know, it's like you can't know everything. I think something I really enjoyed about, I'm not sure if it was the last episode, or which episode it was, but Jacob admits to having applied to Morehouse. And that's one of my, that's one of my favorite nuggets. It's so revealing.

One thing about this episode is we're introduced to Jacob's partner. You are a very esteemed theater actor. You're doing King James at the Steppenwolf Theatre right now. When did you hear Larry Owens would be playing Jacob's boyfriend, and were you excited about that?

I was so excited. I've seen Larry be brilliant in so many things, and when Quinta mentioned that this is where we were going, it was obviously very exciting to me, but I couldn't stop thinking about who it might be. And then the second they mentioned Larry, I was super pumped about that. He's a brilliant actor and he's great on our show.

This episode ends with some amazing physical comedy. Did you actually get to go desking, and is there a fun preparation story for that? Because it did look super fun to run and jump across the desks, but also dangerous.

This is such a boring answer, but I lobbied super hard to be able to do the desking, and it's shot in a way that is incredibly safe. Our director, and our producers, and our amazing stunt folks — yes there are stunts on Abbott Elementary — were super cognizant of this turning out badly. So we shot it in a very safe way, and they had to lock up the gym that we shot this scene in, so that the entire cast wouldn't, after we were done for the day, try and complete the desking challenge. But yeah so sadly, no.

So to clarify, did you do a little bit of the stunts, or was that someone else and you just popped in at the end with your shorts?

We did a bunch of versions of both, and so I'm not sure. One of the amazing things about the show is I'm usually very inclined to never see myself on camera ever. It's an experience that I normally find torturous, but for this, because of the way that we shoot the show, there's no kind of traditional coverage of things, and so there's always just three cameras going at once to capture that guerilla-style documentary filmmaking aesthetic, and so I've been watching the show because I just don't know what pieces they're using. The show is written very clearly in the sense that I can feel the rhythm of it, but visually it's like I have no idea what it's gonna look like. So, I have no idea what this is gonna look like. I have no idea what piece of the desking they're gonna use.

A really nice thing about this episode too, is that it builds more on Jacob and Janine's friendship. What has been the process of you and Quinta building that relationship, and coming into the show was it at all daunting that you're playing the series creator's best friend?

No, not daunting. I mean, well, it's still a thing now that you've said it now [Laughs]. I don't know. It just was always very clear to me. When I read something for the first time, I enjoy it when it passes the two tests, which are: Does it make me laugh out loud in a public place? And would I be jealous if somebody else were doing it? And it passed both of those, so I always just felt like the character was extremely clear. I could see that person in the world. There's a lot of overlap with Jacob and Janine in terms of what they're after, but they're obviously very different in a million ways too. He was always described to me as the best friend or the brother that everybody wishes they had had, and like Janine, he is ferociously loyal and well-intentioned, obviously to a fault most of the time. They're both kind of these social puppies. They're overachievers, and Jacob is certainly like a nervous wreck. I view him as sort of like a Shakespearean clown. I'm typically cast as these darker brooding, troubled and tragic characters, and Jacob is obviously a total 180 from that. So yeah, that's how he was described and what attracts me to him.

What has been the best part of being on the show? Has it been really exploring those relationships with Quinta and all the other cast members?

Yeah, look, there are so many aspects of Abbott that again are jockeying for first place on my list of reasons why I love my job. First and foremost, to your point, everybody thinks that they have the best cast, and they don't actually, I, in fact, do unequivocally. I have the best cast and I'm very happy to go to work with them. They're very hard-working and very, very good at their job, so figuring out the relationships of these characters with those people specifically has been really, really amazing. And I would say I'm equally very happy to be working on something that is just unabashedly about what it's about, and that is Black presence, and the pedestal that educators should be on, and their immense contributions in this country. And yeah, I think just like being a part of something that is first and foremost, really funny, but is maybe showcasing a group of people that aren't usually the stars of a workplace comedy.

This is something that keeps coming up for me as a real point of pride, that the larger message of the show too is very easy to get behind. I don't know if you're still reeling from [Sunday], as most people probably are, but I was really struck by many things after I watched the Oscars after my show came down last night. I was like there's all of these people talking about how dark the world is right now, and what a scary place the world is right now, and I know it was always Quinta's intention not only by creating a protagonist who is like trying to contribute positively, and then I guess just at large making something very funny, like I am very happy about being in something that may be contributing positively to the zeitgeist and the national dialogue in this country. That is incredibly fulfilling and life affirming. Being an actor is often, as I said, a demanding and oppressing endeavor, and so that's really enough for me if we're doing that, if we're making people smile.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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