Yer a lizard, Harry.
Ever since Quinta Brunson’s ABC series Abbott Elementary took the struggling sitcom industry by storm in 2021, many of the most popular and recognizable figures in pop culture have been clamoring to land a guest spot on the show. Bradley Cooper appeared on Abbott as himself in early 2024. Rob Mac brought the entire It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia main cast with him for a crossover earlier this year, before inviting Abbott back to Paddy’s Pub in Always Sunny Season 17.
For the most part, the A-list celebrity guests on Abbott have been Philadelphia natives with hometown pride, but the biggest fish that sadly slipped through Brunson’s figures would have come from across the pond – from Hogwarts, in fact.
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During a cast round table with Entertainment Weekly leading up to the premiere of Abbott Elementary Season Three, Brunson and her co-stars discussed which celebrity guests they want to play their characters’ family members for an episode or two. When the question came to William Stanford Davis, who plays Mr. Johnson, the school’s crotchety, chaotic, conspiracy-theorizing janitor, Brunson revealed that she wanted to introduce Daniel Radcliffe as Mr. Johnson’s son.
“And not Daniel Radcliffe as (a character),” Brunson told Davis, “Like, Daniel Radcliffe is your son.”
“I love Daniel Radcliffe, he’s a very good, sweet guy, a friend of mine,” Brunson said of the son that got away, “And, for some reason, in the (writers’) room, we were like, ‘What if Daniel Radcliffe was Mr. Johnson’s son?’”
As the rest of the cast – Davis especially – began to crack up at the thought of the most enigmatic member of the Willard R. Abbott Elementary School staff secretly having a white, British, superstar actor for a son, Brunson said of the idea, “There’s no rhyme or reason! It’s so dumb!” But, at the same time, it’s so brilliant.
Brunson didn’t explain why the Radcliffe idea never made it into the show, but he has to be the biggest “What if?” in Abbott Elementary history. The show’s slightly-off-reality universe has some pretty strange elements, but adding the Johnson-Radcliffe lineage to the canon would have sent the series into full-on absurdity.
Did Mr. Johnson have Radcliffe in the U.K. before moving to Philadelphia, leaving Radcliffe and his (probably also Black) mother behind? Did Mr. Johnson adopt the Harry Potter star here in America and train him to speak with a British accent, knowing that he was destined for silver screen stardom? These are the questions that both the other characters of Abbott and the show’s fans would have had, and it would have been hilarious for Brunson and her writers to answer none of them.
Then again, there are plenty of Abbott seasons left in the ABC tank, and we still don’t know much about Mr. Johnson’s backstory or personal life beyond his bronze medal in the 1976 Olympics, his work as a private investigator, his stint as a state senator and a handful of other odd jobs prior to his start at Abbott in 1992. Maybe Radcliffe can still join the Abbott family at some point – and maybe he voted for Kanye West in the 2020 presidential election, too.
