At the Actor Awards 2026, the Abbott Elementary star played with her fun and serious sides in Gabriela Hearst.
The Actor Awards, formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild Awards , it turns out, tops her list. The Abbott Elementary cast, which was nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series this year, won in the same category for its first season back in 2022, after all.
“It’s really nice just celebrating the rest of the acting community specifically,” Brunson told Vanity Fair over the phone on Friday. “There’s just something really sweet about this award show to me.” Come Sunday night, she walked the carpet in a striking custom Gabriela Hearst dress, split down the middle in black and white. For glam, she went with a deep red lip, and her pixie-cut was accented with a well-placed swoop. “The black and white of the dress, it feels like very much where I am right now,” Brunson said. And she loved the exaggerated sleeves on it, which created something of a heart shaped silhouette. “There's a seriousness to it, a playfulness to it, but the black and white, for some reason, really speaks to me. I feel like it's becoming, for me, a very black and white world, my decision making, how I have to look at things, but still fun.” Brunson’s relationship with the brand has seemed sort of destined. She’d noticed the actress Danai Gurira was frequently wearing Hearst’s designs, but Brunson hadn’t immediately recognized the sustainable luxury brand on the Black Panther star. “I bought a few of pieces without knowing when I was taking a trip to Italy,” she says. “And then I went to New York when I was actually doing SNL the second time. … I was like, whoa, I didn't know that designer has a store here! I went there and spent all of my money, but I'm proud of every penny I spent because I really enjoyed her clothes. And then I wound up meeting her at the Met.” Later she attended one of Hearst’s shows in Paris, which Brunson described as a fantastic experience. So she says she was glad “to wear a dress that is representative of all of these positive experiences for the Actors Awards.” She had plenty of time to shine at the ceremony, and not just on the red carpet. The Abbott cast, including Lisa Ann Walter and Janelle James, had a special role at the ceremony, too. They opened the show with a fun pre-recorded skit where their characters discussed the year’s nominees–or, at least tried to. The skit picked up a long running bit where Barbara, played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, continues to struggle with recalling names, mistaking “Martin Supreme” for Marty Supreme and Jennifer Coolidge for Jennifer Lawrence. “One thing about my cast is we do have great chemistry and we've learned to play off of each other's comedic rhythms,” Brunson said. “And we've been doing this now for five seasons. What's cool about that is both knowing how people will perform and also being surprised at how people choose to perform sometimes. And that pushes growth in each other, keeps us on our toes.” But she’s also aware that viewers find comfort in the characters after getting to know them over the years, while watching their 22-episode seasons. “I think with the sitcom, it's a balance of giving people the quirks and the funny parts of the character's personality that audiences come for, right? People are coming to the TV on Wednesday night to see the people they know and know the people they see,” she said. “And it can be easy to want to rest in those quirks and the comedic beats that people are counting for, and you want to, right? You don't want to abandon those. But in our show, there's emphasis on the characters growing and changing.” Her character, Janine, has certainly grown throughout the show. “She was previously a very naive, very optimistic character, and now she knows a little bit more,” Brunson says. “She knows a lot more.” Brunson has evolved, too. “It's very special for any actor to be able to do that, to be on a show for five seasons and go through changes over time with the character and find the ways to keep what was there originally and show the growth without losing what was originally there,” she said. Her work on the show demands most of her attention, Brunson’s not as involved in the intricacies of her styling as she wishes she could be, but she trusts her team, including her stylist Jessica Pastor to keep her looking red carpet ready. “I think doing the good work first in my writing, producing, and acting career is what gets you to the carpet in the first place,” Brunson said. “So that's kind of my main goal is to make sure my work is good.”
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