Brian Jordan Alvarez likes to say he was the type of wild child who would get in trouble for having “too much personality” in class. A self-described class clown, he was adept at playing practical jokes and prone to breaking out into funny little dances. It seems fitting, then, that Alvarez would choose to embark on a career as an actor and a comedian if only to reconnect with that playful inner child—and now, to return to that classroom environment—as an adult.
After achieving viral stardom during the pandemic for playing a bevy of heavily accented, face-filtered characters on social media, Alvarez—whose past screen credits include the Will & Grace revival, Jane the Virgin, and M3GAN—has parlayed his popularity into creating English Teacher, a feel-good FX half-hour comedy series set at a public high school in suburban Austin, Texas.
The buzzy workplace sitcom stars Alvarez as Evan Marquez, an obstinate but endearing educator who struggles to meet the conflicting needs of his students and their helicopter parents amid an ever-changing sociopolitical climate. As an openly gay man, Evan must wrestle with the inherent friction of trying to be his authentic self in an environment rife with casual homophobia. The pilot finds Evan navigating the fallout after a student witnesses him kiss his boyfriend (played by comedian Jordan Firstman) at school (the student’s mother files a formal complaint, threatening Evan’s job). In the second episode, Evan enlists the help of a drag queen (played by Trixie Mattel) to help the football team level up their cheerleading skills for a politicized powderpuff game.
Stephanie Koenig in Englisher Teacher
While its eccentric characters and schoolroom setting will certainly evoke comparisons with the ABC mockumentary Abbott Elementary, Alvarez’s show is edgier in tone, finding its humor in the otherwise knotty mess of hot-button topics. For instance, the fourth episode, which sees Evan attempting to shut down a “gun club” started by gruff gym teacher Markie Hillridge (Sean Patton), offers widely divergent opinions—and definitions—of firearm safety. But the show intentionally avoids being preachy or taking any clear moral stance, instead choosing to explore multiple perspectives through its characters.
“What we’re going for is a strong mix of really outright, bold comedy. We’re trying to make you laugh as hard as you’ve laughed all year, and we have real empathy for all the characters we’re portraying,” says the 37-year-old Alvarez, who credits his being “very online” for helping him determine what is most culturally relevant to audiences. “My mom raised me with the idea that people are doing their best and doing what they think is right. Looking at that, especially when you don’t exactly come down on a [moral] decision, can create really interesting plotlines and be very funny.”
Brian Jordan Alvarez and Sean Patton in English Teacher
Born in Manhattan but raised primarily in rural Tennessee, Alvarez, whose mother is a Spanish university professor, went to high school in a liberal outpost of an otherwise conservative state. He decided to set English Teacher in the same non-homogenous learning environment, “where people from every different part of life are forced to interact for the common goal of educating these kids,” he tells W from his home in Los Angeles. “The students are like the Greek chorus of the show, where they’re processing this information and feeding it back to us. We’re learning from them, and they’re learning from us.”
English Teacher marks an all-time career high for Alvarez, who began his creative pursuits as a precocious pre-teen making home movies—which he would shoot with his Sony Handycam and edit on his mother’s jewel-colored iMac. “I made claymation movies. I also used to make stop-motion movies on a Canon SLR camera that shot three frames per second because I knew the visuals were better,” he recalls cheekily.
Alvarez’s rise in the digital space was a slow burn. While waiting tables in his 20s, he began to produce his own projects. The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, a five-part web series he and his collaborators (including English Teacher co-star Stephanie Koenig) made on a paltry budget of around $10,000, was named IndieWire’s best web series of 2016. The series was a way for Alvarez to create a lane for himself. “If you have an ability, maybe a talent, and you think the world isn’t getting an opportunity to see it yet, you have to give yourself that opportunity,” he says.
Even now, with a major show under his belt, Alvarez has no plans to give up the absurdist characters he created in a fit of boredom during the pandemic. “The truth is, I just have a ton of creative juice, so I have to let it out,” he says with a laugh, adding that he likes to think of his output, regardless of the medium, all as the same work. “I’m very grateful that I get to do work that takes longer and has an even bigger, more exciting payoff, as well as work that is quick, fun, and easy and has an instant internet payoff. That, to me, is so satisfying because I’m getting the best of both worlds.”
Most importantly, the creator still feels his distinctive comedic sensibility—which has only been punched up by his cast and crew—in the final product of the show: “We really want to pull you in, get your attention, and then by the time the episode slows down for an emotional moment, we hope to have earned it from you.”
And while he always envisioned English Teacher as “a show for everyone,” Alvarez is also aware of some early skepticism that the show is “bothsidesing” polarizing issues with real-world implications. The pilot, for instance, opens with the teachers noting that their teenage students have moved beyond being “woke,” and Firstman’s character, a gay man, says he listens to the Red Scare podcast as an admission of his brewing conservatism.
“At its best, the show is a microcosm of how real life is. One thing it’s looking at is a sort of reactionary nature that has been coming up lately, instead of people having meaningful, deep conversations, which is what I think we all would hope for,” says Alvarez, who concedes that is still easier said than done. “This is a comedy—and we remind ourselves of that all the time—but maybe it can help us have some conversations sometimes. But mostly, we’re laughing at the absurdity of life. We’re trying to laugh at everything.”
