Abbott Elementary‘s highly-anticipated return kicked things up a notch with cameos from Philadelphia Eagles players — including Jason Kelce.
During the season 3 premiere, which aired on Wednesday, February 7, Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) realized that Gary (Bruno Amato) is preparing to propose to a less-than-thrilled Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter). Philadelphia Eagles players Kelce, 36, Jalen Hurts and Brandon Graham subsequently surprise Melissa’s class with a video chat and Hurts, 25, proposes on Gary’s behalf.
When the football players aren’t able to change Melissa’s mind about marriage, she ultimately breaks up with Gary.
“I support a woman’s right to stand up for what she wants or doesn’t want,” Hurts tells Melissa after their lengthy talk.
After the episode aired, showrunner Justin Halpern broke down how they were able to pull off that surprise in the season 3 premiere.
“Jalen Hurts’ people actually emailed us in the middle of season two to say that he was a big fan of the show, and if there was ever an opportunity he’d be interested in being on it. Sports are a big part of Philadelphia,” he noted to The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s in the DNA of the city. Our characters talk about it. Quinta said before, ‘You can’t do a Philly show and not have them talking about sports.’ So we’re doing this career day episode, and we want a fun, exciting guest star for our premiere — but not just a famous person because they’re famous.”
Halpern continued: So we were like, ‘Oh, it’d be so great if what f—ks up her career day is the fact that she ends up getting somebody who’s too famous in terms of Philly.’ So we reached out and they were preparing for the playoffs, so we knew we couldn’t fly him out here. So we said, ‘Let’s just have it happen via Zoom and that’ll be how we do it.’ And then it just all kind of worked out. We have an amazing crew and they made it happen.”
Multiple celebrities have made appearances on Abbott Elementary as the ABC sitcom continues to find success with fans and critics alike. Season 2 of Abbott Elementary featured cameos from Orlando Jones as Gregory’s father, Taraji P. Henson as Janine’s mother and Ayo Edebiri as Janine’s sister, respectively.
Series star and creator Quinta Brunson has since opened up about getting celebrities to guest star on the show.
“I think it’s so nice when people look at it as an opportunity to be in something that their kids can watch also,” Brunson, 34, told Entertainment Tonight earlier this month. “Because a lot of actors who are part of more dramatic projects or things that are little PG-13 to rated R, Abbott is something that their kids can see them in.”
Brunson gets contacted “a thousand times more than she lets on” about potential cameos, per Halpern and Patrick Schumacker.
“Justin and I only hear of a small fraction of the celebrities and very, very famous people wanting to be on the show,” Schumacker said on Wednesday. “But I think all of us are in agreement, and this comes down from Quinta, that if it can’t make sense in the context of what we’re treating as a real documentary about a real school in Philadelphia, then 95 percent of the people who want to be on the show and play themselves, like their real-life counterpart essentially, it doesn’t really make a ton of sense. We don’t want to break that sort of precious truth that we’re trying to seek out with the show. That said, sometimes it’s very hard to resist.”
Abbott Elementary airs on ABC Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET and is available to stream on Hulu the next day.
