Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the first master class of the 2025-26 school year here at Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, which is also being recorded and will air as the 600th episode of the Hollywood Reporter's Awards Chatter podcast.

I'm Scott Feinberg, a trustee professor here as well as THR's executive editor of awards coverage and the host of Awards Chatter.

And like you, I am so thrilled to be joined tonight by a very gifted stand-up comedian and actress who has become one of the most popular people on television via her portrayal of Ava Coleman, the narcissistic, incompetent, morally compromised, toxic, but still somehow lovable, principal at a Philadelphia K-8 school on Quinta Brunson's hit ABC comedy

series Abbott Elementary.

Ahead of the upcoming 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, for her show's fourth season, she is a nominee

for the best supporting actress in a comedy series Emmy, just as she was for the previous three.

She has also been nominated for SAG, Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and Spirit Awards,

and along with her castmates, has won the Best Comedy Ensemble SAG Award.

And I think it's pretty obvious that the best is yet to come.

And so, would you please join me in welcoming to Chapman

and to the Hollywood

Reporters' Awards Chatter podcast, Ms. Janelle James?

Thank you so much for being here. I was in the wings listening.

Thank you very much for coming here.

Thank you for having me.

On our kickoff of the season, of the year, of the school year.

What we do with these conversations is go back to the very beginning and work our way to the present.

So can we begin by asking you to share where were you born and raised? And what did your folks do for a living? Oh, I feel like you're the first person to ask me that. Not the where I'm born and raised, but what my folks did for a living? They'll love that. Born and raised in the Virgin Islands. I'm from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. That's roughly half my life

and then the half in New York City. And my mom has worked, well, I don't want to say where my mom,

she still works there because she's of that generation where you stay at a job for your whole

life. So she still works there, I will say, for the government.

Very nice.

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