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Brian Jordan Alvarez Talks His New Comedy on FX

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Brian Jordan Alvarez Talks His New Comedy on FX

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PASADENA, Calif. — Brian Jordan Alvarez shot to fame on TikTok with his face filters. Now he’s unveiling a wild new comedy series as creator, writer and lead actor, and he hopes he doesn’t have to take any lessons.

Alvarez celebrated his 37th birthday last July by promoting “English Teacher,” his new comedy series on FX (Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PDT, and airing the next day on Hulu) as Evan Marquez, a gay high school English teacher in Austin, Texas, who finds himself in hot water with his principal (Enrico Colantoni, “Veronica Mars”) after an outraged parent sees him kissing his boyfriend in the school parking lot. In subsequent episodes, we meet the meddling mom, learn from a particularly insightful gym teacher (Sean Patton) and watch Evan grapple with pretentious students, teacher headaches and imaginary illnesses like “asymptomatic Tourette syndrome.” Imagine a more subversive, edgier, and cruder version of ABC’s hit series “Abbott Elementary.”

The actor and comedian rose to fame with a 2016 YouTube series, “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” starring Stephanie Koenig, a “Teacher” writer who plays history teacher Gwen Sanders. He has nearly 700,000 followers on those TikTok videos, played Estefan Gloria, the fiancé (and eventually husband) of Sean Hayes’ Jack, in 13 episodes of NBC’s “Will & Grace” reboot, and played Cole, who helped create the creepy robot in the 2022 campy horror film “M3gan.” (He’s filming a sequel in New Zealand.) He talks to USA TODAY about his latest project and how he learned to run his own show. (The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Question: The question posed by the show’s tagline is: “Can you really be yourself at work?” Is it valid to describe it that way?

Brian Jordan Alvarez: It’s a complicated answer, and the show walks that line, it thrives on that question, really.

Does “English Teacher” draw inspiration from other school comedies you’ve seen? People might say, “Oh, it’s like Abbott Elementary.”

It’s a great show. And (creator) Quinta (Brunson) is a genius. No, this show just exists in its own universe. It’s a very specific voice.

What is…

Actually, it’s a hard comedy. (Executive producer) Paul Simms has always made sure it’s a comedy. We want people to laugh from beginning to end.

So, not like “The Bear”, then.

(Laughs). There’s a lot of amazing dramatic TV shows. You just have this feeling of, “Hey, let’s go, joke, joke, joke here,” and that’s one of the things I love so much because despite everything, the show allows itself a lot of heart.

How do you research to write articles about students?

I’m very connected. I spend a lot of time scrolling through TikTok and Instagram, and I feel relatively in tune with what’s going on, how people are talking today. And what you see a lot on Twitter is how young people feel about old people, how old people feel about young people. People blame this generation for it. The show really thrives on different people doing what they think is right, but disagreeing with what’s right. And sometimes characters are trying to do something right, but doing something wrong in the process.

You don’t dwell much on children, but was it difficult to choose them?

We have so many funny kids; two of them came straight from TikTok. There’s this guy, Ben Bondurant, and he’s the kid in the pilot episode who says, “If they’re gonna get you, they’re gonna get you.” Somebody tagged me in his TikTok video and said, “This guy reminds me of you.” We started watching his videos. He’s so funny. He’ll be in his car and text me like, “You changed my life.” And our team is very open to ideas, open to people improvising, and so they’ll sometimes tell us what’s cool, or I’ll say, “How would you really say this, or how would you make this seem real to you?” We cast maybe 70 to 80 percent of the kids that way.

How important is it that Evan is gay and how does that influence the way you approach the show?

What I like about this approach is that it allows us to write from an inside perspective and make jokes that only make sense from that perspective. People can feel the authenticity.

What did you learn from appearing on other TV shows like “Will & Grace” and “Jane the Virgin”?

Being on “Will and Grace” was a really incredible learning experience. In our show, there’s a real clarity about an energy that we’re trying to convey: people are talking over each other and it’s fast-paced. So just seeing Max Mutchnick (co-creator), Jim Burrows (director) and the actors too, like Sean Hayes, with such clarity and confidence and really giving it their all, going all the way. And Max, when he was very sure of what he wanted, it pushed me to be very clear about what I wanted when we were doing this, and to speak freely.

And are you done with your face filters?

No, I’m just getting started. Four thousand of them, more needs to be done.

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