Janelle James Likes To Be The Bad Boss In ‘Abbott Elementary’

Would you like to survive the apocalypse?

Oh no. Oh my god, no. I’ve been to Costco and stuff. Why would I even want to live in that kind of world?

I view Ava as a scammer, and I think real-life scammers can be put on the spectrum of “they believe what they are doing is good” to “they just mess with people”. because they can.” Where do you think Ava falls?

He is right in the middle. I think part of his point is, “Hey, the school system is messed up.” She was probably a product of that same school system, so here she is – it’s made as a headmaster; Nothing has changed. So why not take advantage? Why not put yourself at ease with the way he is being treated? While Janine is optimistic and thinks things will change, Ava on the other end: things won’t change, until everything falls apart, what can I get out of it?

When did you get into standup?

I’ve been in New York for about 15 years, and I did a brief exodus to the Midwest for about four years, and that’s where I started at a rockabilly biker club called Memphis on Maine. [in Champaign, Ill.], I did an open mic there, and I did it by chance. I loved it, and I never stopped doing it. In earnest, I just caught the bug, baby!

How do you approach your stand-up versus role like Ava?

Having someone else write for you is cake! Like I said, I didn’t want to be an actress, and I still don’t consider it a professional – I mean, I feel like I’m a professional actor now, but not like someone who’s more than just acting. Have passed school. I don’t prepare. I read it myself, and then I go on set and do it. But I think it comes from being stand-up for 10 years. So it’s not that I didn’t prepare; I have prepared differently now. I can read something and know right away how to do it in a way that makes people laugh.

I don’t even really write my stand-up. When I first started I used to – I would write every word, go over it several times. Now, like anything, you do it long enough, and you know it. If I have an idea, I already know it before I say it, it’s funny. I don’t necessarily sit like, “I need to write jokes.” I try to live a whole lot of life so that things happen to me and—hopefully on my knees, praying—I find something so weird that I can put it in my stand-up set.