William Stanford Davis wants his Abbott Elementary character Mr. Johnson to feel familiar.
Maybe not all of us had a conspiracy-prone school custodian who may offer some surprisingly sage advice in one breath and try to scam you out of $20 in the next. But, we do all know a person who doesn’t quite fit any of the molds society has created for us. That eccentric person who seems to have lived a thousand lives before they came into ours. That, Davis says, is who he hopes Mr. Johnson evokes in between his hilarious one-liners.
“I try to make him an honest, 100% human being. He just has a few quirky ways,” the actor told Deadline during a sit-down conversation at San Diego Comic-Con.
Davis was joined at the convention by much of his fellow Abbott Elementary cast and crew, including creator and star Quinta Brunson as well as Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Lisa Ann Walter, and Chris Perfetti. Following the panel, which treated the audience to an episode from Season 4, Davis took a deep dive with us into his career and everything that makes Mr. Johnson tick.
While he can’t say much about what’s in store for Season 5, he did share a few of his wishes for Mr. Johnson (including some ideas for his love life) and teased his reaction to the eight scripts he’d read so far.
Read the conversation below.
DEADLINE: Before our chat, you were on a panel with your cast at SDCC, and they screened an episode of Season 4 before you all took the stage. How was it to hear an audience react to the episode?
WILLIAM STANFORD DAVIS: To feel that kind of love is just so overwhelming. To know that you affect someone in that kind of way and [for it to] show itself with even the individual laughs that you get, yeah, they just show us a lot of love. I get kind of blown away by it.
DEADLINE: You have brought so much laughter and energy to this show as Mr. Johnson? How have you developed Mr. Johnson into such an integral part of the Abbott Elementary crew?
DAVIS: That’s a great question, because Mr. Johnson was supposed to be a guest star, and whatever I did in the pilot episode, not only they loved it, but when they showed it to focus groups, they said the needle would go off the monitor. Once again, I owe that to the fans and to Quinta [Brunson] for seeing that and recognizing this character.
DEADLINE: Any ideas about what resonated with audiences and made them want more of this character?
DAVIS: I think his honesty. Everyone has a an eccentric type of character in their family. Not only eccentric, which he is a bit, but I had people in my family similar to him that were enigmatic. I had a lot of conspiracy theorists in my family. So I think that everyone can relate to that, either they know someone like that, or they’re related to someone like that, and I think they like his honesty. Everyone has their own truth, and he’s just different from everybody else, and I think that’s the most entertaining part about him.
DEADLINE: Mr. Johnson has some of the funniest one-liners in the show. Do you ever find yourself laughing out loud when you get the scripts?
DAVIS: Oh, yeah. We’ve had eight table reads so far this season, and every one of them, I will talk out loud when it’s not my time to speak, cause it’s so funny, and they’re like, ‘Shhhh.’ I can’t tell you about anything’s gonna happen this season, but yeah, I laugh out loud all the time, especially in the reads with everyone there.
DEADLINE: Before you joined Abbott, you had a veteran career in television and film. Your first on-screen roles were in the 90s. How do you think you developed over the course of your career so, when Abbott came along, you were able to make the most of that character and that show?
DAVIS: A lot of episodic TV, a lot of drama. They say drama is easy and comedy is hard, and it really is, because it’s about timing and not pushing it or overdoing it. I try to bring the specifics to every character — the specifics of what a human being does in those situations, whether it’s written in a funny way or not. I try not to push too hard, because once again, comedy is very hard. If the timing is off, or you’re pushing too hard, the audience is going to see that. I try to keep him as honest as I can.
DEADLINE: You’ve been saying for a while that you’d like to see a love interest for Mr. Johnson. Any progress there?
DAVIS: Well, Jacob’s had a love interest. We know Barbara’s husband. Ava has a love interest. Gregory and Janine have a love interest. So, you know, maybe there’s somebody for everybody.
DEADLINE: What do you think Mr. Johnson is like in a relationship?
DAVIS: I think he’s probably very wimpy. He’s probably totally different. He probably buys flowers and remembers every occasion and gets upset if she comes in late or something. That’s the way I see him. I know they see him totally differently [at school], but I think that he’s a bit of a pushover when it comes to his love interest, whoever that may be.
DEADLINE: How do you think the other teachers might react to seeing the lovey dovey side of Mr. Johnson?
DAVIS: I don’t know. Janelle [James] and I are pretty close as friends in the cast, but I think it’d be very interesting to see how [Ava] would react to Mr. Johnson having a love interest, someone who’s really got their stuff together, and would totally be unexpected for him to have. I think that would blow her away. I think the only person that would be in my corner would be Janine.
DEADLINE: It seems like we’ve got this kind of figured out. I hope the writers read this! Mr. Johnson needs a love interest.
DAVIS: We joke about it all the time. In fact, someone brought it up this morning. [Quinta] looked at me like, ‘Okay, here we go.’ But there’s a couple of things I thought about. I thought that maybe he should have a little adventure so you should see him at home. I said that Marla Gibbs should be his mother, and she’s the only person that makes him kind of bow down. He’s just like, ‘Okay, Mom.’ Everyone has a life away from their job, and I think we should see that sooner or later, and I’m pretty sure that we will. I mean, this man has worked all over the universe, I don’t even say the planet. We talked about it being an astronaut a few minutes ago, so maybe that’ll come up.
DEADLINE: One of my all-time favorite Mr. Johnson moments is when he’s pretending to be a bouncer at Janine’s party and taking money from people to get into her apartment. It’s a great episode and one with a lot of depth for your character.
DAVIS: That was great. That’s where she and Gregory, they kiss, and that’s who I give her the advice about. That was one of my favorite episodes, because it does show another side of this character. He does have a heart, and he knows young love when he sees it, because he was in love when he was a young man himself.
DEADLINE: I do enjoy the moments where we see the deepening relationships between the characters.
DAVIS: I got to really treat Janine like my daughter. That’s the way I look at all of them, except for maybe Barbara and Melissa. They been there longer than everyone. I know them better than all the other teachers. Ava, not like my daughter, but maybe my crazy stepdaughter.
DEADLINE: For as irritated as he often seems by all of them, we’re definitely starting to see how much he cares.
DAVIS: He cares about the school. He cares about the kids. It is [an] underprivileged, underfunded school. So he wants to make it the best learning experience that he can possibly help to make it by keeping the floors clean, keeping the air on, making sure they got enough heat in the winter and they don’t fall in the snow and break their necks and things like that. I had custodians like that. They really took time with us, played football with us on the black top, things like that. So I never think this guy is a caricature or cartoon. I try to make him an honest, 100% human being. He just has a few quirky ways.
DEADLINE: This season there was a crossover episode with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Mr. Johnson spent a lot of that time with Frank. How was it working with Danny DeVito?
DAVIS: I will say one of the best experiences I’ve had. I’ve worked with some major actors and never had the type of relationship I had with him. He was just 100% a pro. Just came ready to work, funny, shared stories with me. Everyone asked him the story about how he he got Taxi, and he told me the the honest truth that he did not stand on the table, but he did throw the script down and say, ‘Who wrote this shit?’ and that’s what got him the job. We started talking about taking risks as actors, because a lot of actors wouldn’t have been that bold to take that type of risk and it just kind of reinforced that within me.
I should say he was a lot of fun. [He was] quick, honestly, you know, even for his age, just really quick. He came ready to work. Tyler and I got out there, and he was already in the cage, in the mud, in the snow, eating the raccoon food. And I told Tyler, I said, ‘Man, we gotta step our game up.’ It was just really an enlightening experience. He gave me some advice. He told me to make him get me a box, and what he meant was an apple box. At first, I didn’t know what he’s talking about, but he had this really polished apple box with his initials carved in. Whatever his mark was, before we started rolling the camera, that box was there so he could sit. He said, ‘Get a box. Get a box. Make them get you a box.’ He said, ‘It’s easy on the pins.’ He’s talking about my legs, and I understood what he meant. I came to work the next day, and they had a box for me with my initials and my name and stars, and it was polished. So I had to thank him.
DEADLINE: Next we’ll see you working with Wanda Sykes in Undercard. What can you say about that?
DAVIS: Once again, like I said, I cut my teeth on episode drama…It took me back to that. It was an honor to work with Wanda and to see her in this role that no one would expect to see her in. The storyline was, I think, not just important, but very moving. I think people are going to really be taken by the movie, but I think they’re going to be equally surprised to see, ‘Wow, she’s got those type of chops.’ I mean, she’s an actress, she’s a comic, so she’s fearless, and this brings out her fearlessness. She’s so generous. Oh, wow. She’s just a really generous person, and I hope to work with her again.
