Ever since he was a young boy — specifically, as a child actor on “Everybody Hates Chris” — Tyler James Williams knew he wanted to be a director. In his own words, he fell in love not just with being on TV, but with making TV, and he couldn’t wait to get behind the camera one day.
What he may not have expected was that his directorial debut would be one of the hardest “Abbott Elementary” episodes to shoot: Season 4, Episode 13, “Science Fair.”
“It wasn’t until we really started breaking it down, it was like, ‘Oh, this is huge,’” Williams told IndieWire after the episode aired. “There’s a scene where Janine (Quinta Brunson) is building the volcano with Clarissa (Amentii Sledge). She leaves her classroom and goes to Melissa’s classroom (Lisa Ann Walter). While we’re there, the Tiniest Kid (Dillion Blake Allen) runs in, steals the beakers, runs out of that room. Janine follows him to then have a conversation in the hallway with Gregory (Williams) and then run into Ava (Janelle James) at the same time. We had to cross three sets at one time, essentially, for that whole scene to run together.”
That’s just one of many challenging scenes — there’s also Ava and Janine approaching the office and an inevitable run-in with Ava’s father Frank (Keith David), and then the Science Fair itself in the third act, which includes a sequence where Williams had to leave his position at the monitors, “step into a pocket,” and then step out as the scene continues.
Williams started prepping for “Science Fair” as early as the beginning of the season — or maybe as early as when he was a pre-teen, working with producing director Jerry Levine and asking him as many questions as possible. As Season 4 got underway, Williams started sitting in on production meetings, tone meetings, concept meetings, and asking questions. He started conversations with the crew, with the camera department, with executive producer Randall Einhorn, and began breaking down the episode outline before specific dialogue or characters had been added to it.
“Because I know the space, and I know kind of the language of our show and how it works, I can start understanding how this needs to move and what this needs to look like,” he said. “It’s really hard to explain, and I guess that’s where the the vision part of it comes in, where I just start to see it as I’m reading. This person eventually comes in and says something along these lines, that gets this character to do this. I can kind of see it moving in real time.”
As one of the top directors in the mockumentary space, Einhorn helped “Abbott” and similar shows find their rhythm with the camera operators behaving like characters themselves.
“We had a lot of conversation about not just where the camera could be for the shot, but does that make sense for the documentarian on the other side of that camera?,” Williams said. “Playing with these camera operators and cameras as characters in this world. What are their opinions on everything? Why are they getting this shot the way they are? It influenced a lot of the decisions I made.”
It helped that Williams has “worked symbiotically with this camera department like I have no other. Everybody always asks, ‘What’s the secret to Gregory’s fourth wall-breaking looks? It’s that relationship. Jeremiah Smith and A camera figured out me as an actor within the first few weeks, to where he could find those moments as I found them.” Williams described the experience as essentially prepping the episode as a different character: “I’m just making choices and decisions for every character on the page, including the camera operators.”
At the same time, he says the experience freed him as an actor in certain ways, like not feeling as inclined to critique his own performance between scenes.
“I think one of the things that’s always kind of the pet peeve of actors is, if you feel like you got it, why are we not moving on?,” he said. “I found myself not really being able to direct myself, but more remembering the moment of what it felt like when we shot it. That’s something I think I carry over now as an actor, and what we should do. I don’t think we ever really should watch our performances, because there’s gonna be things we don’t like… but did it feel right in that moment? If it felt right, then it’s good, we can move on.”
“Abbott” is obviously a show where dozens of young extras come with the territory, but “Science Fair” was still a “big kid day,” as Williams puts it. Each of 24 students had to have a science project (with functional practical effects, unfortunately cut for time), and then there had to be enough others present to explore the fair and fill out the gymnasium. In Mr. Morton’s (Jerry Minor) lab, the Bunsen burner flames had to be edited in because child actors cannot be within five feet of an open flame. He rehearsed the big scenes “to the point where it’s like music,” ensuring that the kids moved quickly and instinctively over the course of a detailed shoot.
Williams sounds palpably relieved with the episode finally released, as “Abbott” production continues to play catch-up after pausing during the fires. He’s differently assured as an actor, with his unwavering respect for production only stronger.
“You gotta have a good crew,” he said. “You can’t make a good show without an amazing crew. I had a crew of people who I built relationship with over the last four years, and the way they showed up for me this particular week — I’m just beyond grateful for the way that they did. That’s what they do every week. Actors get a lot of a lot of praise and all that; shows’ success live or die with the crew. That’s something I know for sure now — I thought I knew it before, but now I know it is true.”
New episodes of “Abbott Elementary” air Wednesdays on ABC and stream Thursday onward on Hulu.
