FX’s “English Teacher” is equal parts funny, sweet and raunchy, mining laughs from divisive cultural issues and messy relationships that aren’t usually seen on television. For all that, creator-showrunner-star Brian Jordan Alvarez gives credit to pretty much everyone around him.
Alvarez has been acting, writing, directing and producing songs, sketches and series for years online. While “acting is my first and last love,” he says, “I have a lot of creative energy and I have to find ways to express myself constantly.” Once he started landing bigger roles in more traditional projects, including NBC’s “Will & Grace” reboot and Universal’s “M3GAN,” Alvarez decided to focus solely on acting, leaving online projects behind.
But that online work caught the eye of writer-producer Paul Simms (“Atlanta,” “What We Do in the Shadows”). Simms had seen Alvarez’s earlier YouTube series, “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” and sought him out, asking him to create a TV show. Alvarez demurred. “I said, ‘I tried to make TV shows in the system; I don’t know how to get through the notes process,’ and Paul said, ‘I’m going to be your guide, you’re coming out of retirement, we’re making a TV show.’ This is what you want in your life, this divine voice to float down from heaven and say, ‘You can do it, I believe in you.’”
So Alvarez retired from retiring and quickly came up with the idea for “English Teacher,” drawing from his own life. “My mom’s a teacher, my sister’s a teacher, it’s sort of in my bones,” he says. He grew up in a blue dot in red Tennessee, so setting the show in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, felt familiar. “There’s no set of opinions you can really avoid in a public high school, so I knew all of that in one place could make for good comedy.”
The teachers, parents, administration and state board all weigh in on the best way to instruct the students at the fictional Morrison-Hensley High School, while the students have their own opinions. “The kids in the show are more up-to-date on what’s cool and smart and even how to handle reality in this current moment,” Alvarez notes. “So they’re often teaching the teachers. That was largely to FX’s credit.”
Those studio notes that Alvarez dreaded were actually inspiring. “It was like butter” being in development with FX chairman John Landgraf and the other execs, he says. “You’ll have these meetings with John, where he’s just calmly, intelligently making your show better. He was saying that in some ways, ‘English Teacher’ was a show about how fashions change over time. I thought that was so insightful. And in a way that’s why the show can be evergreen, because we can always look at how the moment is changing.”
On the production side, director Jonathan Krisel (“Portlandia”) showed Alvarez the ropes on set “very lovingly and ego-lessly,” Alvarez says. “He just shared his talent. I’m very grateful to these guides.”
Alvarez’s character, Evan Marquez, is surrounded by work friends as funny as he is. Longtime collaborator and friend Stephanie Koenig, also a writer on the show, plays fellow teacher and best friend Gwen. “Stephanie’s talent is only matched by how wonderful of a person she is,” Alvarez says. “She is so kind, so angelic, everybody on set just adores her. She’s a bright light in this world, really.”
Comedian Sean Patton plays Markie, the high school football coach, a brawny walking anachronism with surprising insights of his own. “For somebody to have that much strength and power and intensity and then such a tenderness, he’s very dynamic,” Alvarez says. Carmen Christopher, who plays a guidance counselor with endless side hustles, is “an amazing improviser, and he’s just as good on script — he takes it very seriously, he’s very precise, and it comes off as this free-flowing performance.” And he calls Enrico Colantoni, who plays their put-upon principal with weary grace, “such a gift to the project. His acting is like a drug.”
“English Teacher” also ventures out of the classroom. Evan is on and off with Malcolm (Jordan Firstman), a bon vivant with large appetites. “Like some other people on the show, Jordan has a very big social media presence, but he is a brilliant actor. He can hold a room in the palm of his hand.” New teacher Harry (Langston Kerman) complicates matters. “Even with just a look, you feel a thousand feelings as an audience member,” Alvarez says.
The show presents Evan’s messy love life so offhandedly it’s radical. “Out of everything we did, I think that was the thing we did least intentionally,” Alvarez says. “But what’s so funny is that does end up being one of the main things that stands out about the show: It’s very free and very comfortable in its own skin, and unafraid to take swings and make crazy jokes. It arose so organically that I didn’t even notice it was happening, and then it’s almost the defining feature of the show.”