This feature is in our Winter '24 "Arts" Issue. Click here to subscribe.

Tyler James Williams loves romantic comedies just as much as you do. In pre-pandemic times, the former child star of Everybody Hates Chris was “obsessing over rom-coms.

“We had this great era in the late ’90s and early 2000s where people had things that encouraged them to fall in love. We live in an era when people feel very disconnected and lonely and struggle to fall in love,” Williams tells Edition from his Los Angeles home. He has acted in one—2019’s The Wedding Year—but it wasn’t until ABC’s runaway comedy hit Abbott Elementary burst onto TV screens in 2021 that Williams felt he captured what he had been yearning for.

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Abbott Elementary, created by and starring former Buzzfeed writer Quinta Brunson, follows a diverse group of teachers at an under-resourced and diverse public elementary school in inner-city Philadelphia. Williams plays wary first-grade substitute Gregory Eddie, who immediately develops an awkward flirtation with Janine Teagues, the second-grade teacher in the next classroom (played by Brunson).

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Now in its fourth season, Abbott’s Gregory and Janine have finally decided to give their budding romance a shot in the kind of slow-burn relationship that harkens back to the Ross and Rachel and Jim and Pam heyday of network TV.

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“There’s something about a long-form television format that really gets people invested and reminds them that they are in their own will-they, won’t-theys, and this is what it looks like week to week. It’s not going to be a fast journey. The beauty is in the details and in that journey,” Williams says. “Abbott Elementary is my love letter to the rom-com.”

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There’s a reason TV shows typically prolong its ’ships in order to keep audiences invested, as often ratings would drop off once their favorite couple settled into the mundanity of a long-term relationship. Williams isn’t worried about that, though. He sees Gregory and Janine—or “Teddy,” the combination of their surnames into their couple nickname—and their respective quirks as building blocks to their relationship and personal growth.

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“Abbott Elementary is my love letter to the rom-com.”— TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS

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“We want them both to become the people that we want them to be and this relationship is what’s sharpening them into that,” he says. “We have a very clear idea of where they’re going to end up—as individuals.”

It doesn’t hurt when your scene partner is the showrunner, either. “Because you can talk about [any concerns] and you know something will actually get done about [them]. It’s not just hypotheticals. [Brunson will] actually go and write it.”

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Though Williams is not part of the writer’s room himself, he hints that he will be flexing the skills he’s developed over almost three decades in the industry through a directing stint during the second half of Abbott’s fourth season, which returns from winter hiatus in 2025. He’s also a producer on Comedy Central’s Everybody Still Hates Chris animated reboot and Sept.’s Amber Alert film, co-starring fellow child actor Hayden Panettiere, which is where he feels he’s able to work out the kinks of any given project without external pressure.

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“You can develop something, try it out, and it goes nowhere, and no one knows about it,” he says of producing. “I can fail, and the stakes are still kind of low because it’s not going out to an audience yet. It’s vital to the process of being a healthy creative. You need to fail. I hate the idea that if a movie or show doesn’t do well, it’s seen as a downside. That’s the failure that somebody is gonna need to figure out the success of the next thing.”

“It’s part of our job [as actors] to be the arbiters of the vibe that is romance and love. That is an art form in itself.”— TYLER JAMES WILLIAMS

Williams is grateful that he “reached the mountaintop early,” which he believes allowed him to accumulate enough success—and crucially avoid the pitfalls of other child stars—that he is now able to separate that from creativity and view his work as an art form.

“I feel like there’s two types of artists in Hollywood: some [for whom] the press is a means to the work, and some [for whom] the work is a means to the press. I [am] the former,” he says, preferring to eschew industry parties and media events in favor of laying low to work on his craft, which includes writing, photography and music. (Williams recorded the rap soundtrack to the Disney Channel movie he also starred in, Let It Shine, in 2012, as well as a 2015 mixtape Me, My Brother & a Mic, recorded with one of his brothers, both of whom he lives with, though he has no current plans to pursue music seriously.)

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“There’s a lot of different ways to make money. If you choose this as the path, why? Why are you choosing art as the way to do that?” he questions.

Success and recognition from his peers and the public alike are nice (Williams has won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series – Comedy/Musical or Drama and has been nominated thrice for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his Abbott role), and it “gives me time to pick the roles I want to do wisely,” he says, but “none of those things are the reasons why I’m doing it or hold really any value to me.”

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At this point in his career, Williams sees himself “less as an actor, even specifically a comedic actor, and more as an artist. Television is my discipline. I get really offended when I see people treat it as a lesser art form.”

He continues: “There’s no better way to tell a story than over the long format of TV because repetition is important and coming into somebody’s house on a regular basis is how you build a relationship. If you see me and you feel anything, then I did my job. I built a relationship with you”..

And what about Gregory and Janine’s relationship on Abbott? Only time will tell, but Williams says it’s an extension of that connection with the audience.

“It’s part of our job [as actors] to be the arbiters of the vibe that is romance and love. That is an art form in itself.”

PHOTO SHOOT CREDITS

Styled by Ilaria Urbinati

Hair by Christina R. Joseph

Makeup by Constance Foe

Movement Director: Jerome AB

Styling Assistant: Jenna Filingeri

Photo Assistant: Joey Abreu

Digitech: Geoff May

Producer: Anders Minor