William Stanford Davis has always envisioned his Abbott Elementary character as having a love interest on the sitcom. Now, his wish has officially been fulfilled.
As we see his character in a new light, Davis is grateful that this adds yet another layer to Mr. Johnson, the beloved elementary school janitor whose main priority is keeping the school clean and showing up for the babies.
“Over the past five seasons, you’ve gotten to see a lot of different sides of this guy, especially all the jobs he’s had and his conspiracy theories — but I think you’ve got to see a bit of his heart, especially in the first season,” Davis told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “In the conversation with Tyler [James Williams] about his job and career, and then with Quinta’s character, Janine, talking about a job and when she found herself falling in love with Gregory. This is not a one-dimensional guy, he’s a 10-dimensional guy.”
The beauty of finding love at an older age
Davis refers to Mr. Johnson as a 360-degree character representing the never-ending cycle of life, which is why it was inevitable for him to ultimately find someone to have the hots for.
A new janitor, played by Khandi Alexander, is officially the woman that the custodial worker has his eye set on — a character Davis noted has been so fun to play with on-screen.
“I’ve been telling them over the last three seasons, you know, this man needs a love interest,” Davis said. “Everyone has a love interest; he needs someone. And they’re like, ‘You’re just talking.’ And then they kind of surprised me. When I read the script, we all were kind of moved by it. It’s been a lot of fun working with the great Khandi Alexander. She came in strong with it. She was like, ‘Let’s just jump in and see where it goes,’ and she was just an honor and a pleasure to work with.”
On creating Mr. Johnson
Davis has his own emotional tie to his character; he shared how people he’s known and loved over the years are the inspiration for who Mr. Johnson is.
“He brings things out of me that I try to hide,” Davis said. “I’ve experience conspiracy theorists in my family, and he reminds me a lot of people in my family, people who aren’t here anymore that I just love so much. As an actor, you’re supposed to be able to play everything that human beings can be, and his reality is just different from others. And I really try to honor that and not make him like a cartoon. This is who this man is.”
“I’ve known guys like him. Like I’ve said, I’ve had family members like him. But in my elementary school — and I’ve been around a minute (chuckles), I’ve been around a little while — I knew guys like him, too. Mr. Glover was our janitor at the school I went to, and he did everything from play football with us on the hard black top and used his own supplies and truck to help bring desks, books and things to the school. So I try to take a little bit from all those experiences in my life, including the people who are close to me, and put it together to make this guy real.”
In February, Davis won the NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Mr. Johnson on Abbott Elementary. He also won in the same category in 2024.
“It really is an honor to be in this category, and it’s an honor to be nominated,” he said. “It says something about not only my work but the work of the guys that I’m nominated with. It says so much about what the show, the character of the show, has created, and I’ve just tried to bring life to this character, even though his reality is a little different than everyone else’s. He is a real human being, and to play him has just been so much fun.”
What’s next for Mr. Johnson and William Stanford Davis?
“There’s something coming up that I can’t tell you about,” Davis teased when asked how much he gets to go off-script when it comes to Mr. Johnson.
He added, “If it’s funnier than what’s written on the page, they let us keep it. If we come up with something — we’ll come up with a tag or what you call a handle at the beginning or something of what is written, but most of it is on the page. We’ll improv sometimes the physicality, but we try to honor who this character is, and not go way way — because I could go way out there.”
In addition to his work on Abbott Elementary, Davis will soon share the screen with Wanda Sykes in the new film Undercard, in which he plays a character by the name of Baba T.
“I think people are gonna be pleasantly surprised with the work that Wanda does because, to my knowledge, this is the first dramatic role that she’s done, and I think people are gonna go, ‘Oh my God, this is really good.’ And the whole cast is just a really fine cast. We worked out in Puerto Rico last summer. It was so hot, but that fed the project, too.”