For a longstanding comedy series like ABC‘s Abbott Elementary, creator Quinta Brunson faces the challenge every season of expanding characters’ backstories and keeping things interesting for those who have watched since Season 1.

One of the ways Season 5 faced that challenge was taking the familiar squad of teachers to an abandoned mall for a couple episodes. Brunson took inspiration from real-life situations in L.A. schools after the wildfires in 2025.

“I’m inspired a lot by what is happening with actual schools,” Brunson said during Deadline’s Contenders TV panel. “I learned about many schools going into malls. It happened here [in L.A.], actually, with the fires. A school where a friend of mine worked, they wound up in an old Sears because their school burned down in the fires.”

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Another way Philadelphia culture was incorporated in Season 5 was through baseball with the staff of the titular elementary school attending a Phillies game.

“I love Philly sports, and we had been looking for a way to work with them,” Brunson said. “It gets hard to get the players out here to do anything, because of when their season is going is when we’re filming, and we don’t want to disrupt their season. So it became easier to just go, ‘Why don’t we just go to a game?’ And that was a huge challenge for all of us, mind you … but that’s another one where I just don’t think people know it’s really hard to film at a live event, damn near impossible.”

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Another introduction made toward the end of Season 5 was conflict between Brunson’s Jeanine and Tyler James Williams’ Gregory, which both actors addressed during the panel, as well as speculation about an important question Gregory could ask Jeanine in the future.

“[Quinta thinks hard] about every relationship conversation, the amount of time over the course of the season,” Williams said. “I watched and heard you talk out the two sides of both arguments, making sure that both of these characters had a point. It just didn’t seem frivolous in a way I think was really important. I think it speaks to really great Season 5 storytelling, where I think a lot of shows would kind of just chalk it up and then throw something in there that felt like it was out of left field. I think that this was a really smart way to handle them, having to pick up more communication skills that we haven’t seen in this way in a long time.”

Check back Monday for the panel video.

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