Quinta Brunson
Named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and dubbed “the new queen of sitcoms” by New York Magazine, Emmy®, SAG, and Golden Globe Award-winning actor, producer, writer and creator Quinta Brunson has quickly made a name for herself as a powerful force and game changer within the entertainment industry.
Brunson made history as the first Black woman to receive three Emmy nominations and the second Black woman to win an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for her Peabody Award-winning series “Abbott Elementary,” which she stars in and serves as creator/showrunner, head writer, and executive producer. Inspired by Brunson’s mother, the show follows a group of dedicated, passionate teachers brought together in a Philadelphia public school where, despite the odds stacked against them, they are determined to help their students succeed in life.
Since its launch “Abbott Elementary” has garnered a slew of awards season wins and nominations, with Brunson personally landing 49 nominations and 21 wins. Some highlights include recently winning her second Emmy (2023) for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, winning a Golden Globe® Award (2023) for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Series, Musical, or Comedy, and landing a 2024 Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series. Brunson won her first Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted Series in 2023 and has been nominated for a PGA Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Comedy. Aside from winning a Peabody Award, “Abbott Elementary” was also an honoree at the 2023 AFI Awards for Outstanding Television Program of the Year (to name a few).
In film, Brunson appeared as Oprah Winfrey in the award-winning feature “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” alongside Daniel Radcliff. It won Outstanding Television Movie at the 2023 Primetime Emmy Awards and Best Movie Made for Television at the Critics Choice Awards.
Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Brunson started her entertainment journey at The Second City in Chicago and burst onto the scene in 2014 when the series she created, “The Girl Who’s Never Been on a Nice Date,” went viral. Brunson’s digital success quickly attracted the attention of BuzzFeed, where she landed an initial job as a video producer. She went on to sell two web series as a development partner with BuzzFeed Motion Pictures: the scripted comedy “Broke” (which she wrote, produced and starred in) for YouTube Red and “Up for Adoption,” which was produced by Verizon’s go90. Since leaving BuzzFeed in 2018, Brunson’s career as a multihyphenate actor and creator in Hollywood has skyrocketed. She landed a lead role in the CW pilot “The End of the World as We Know It”; she wrote, produced and starred in the series “Quinta vs. Everything” for Facebook Watch; and wrote/sold a multicam comedy pilot alongside Larry Wilmore and Jermaine Fowler for CBS with ABC Studios. Brunson has also lent her voice to a plethora of projects, including Adult Swim’s “Lazor Wulf” (where she is also a staff writer) and Netflix’s “Big Mouth.”
On the sketch comedy front, Brunson starred in the first season of HBO’s award-winning series “A Black Lady Sketch Show” and was nominated for a 2023 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her episode of “Saturday Night Live” on NBC. As an author, Brunson released her bestselling debut novel “She Memes Well” (HMH Books) in June 2021.
