As Hillman College enjoys a resurgence on Netflix, the woman who shaped it and the creator raised in her mother’s kindergarten classroom will be honored for the schools they put on screen.
By EEW Magazine Online Entertainment Editors
Quinta Brunson, left, and Debbie Allen will be honored Nov. 16 at the Critics Choice Association’s ninth annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television in Los Angeles. (Photos: Getty Images / Illustration: EEW Magazine Online)
When A Different World premiered on NBC in September 1987, Hillman College gave prime-time audiences a weekly look at Black students working toward degrees, arguing over ideas and figuring out who they wanted to become. Thirty-nine years to the day after that premiere, Hillman reopened on Netflix, and Debbie Allen, who directed most of the original series, is back behind the camera.
On Nov. 16, the Critics Choice Association will honor Allen with the Icon Award at its ninth annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television in Los Angeles.
She will share the evening with Quinta Brunson, who will receive the Groundbreaker Award for Abbott Elementary, her ABC comedy about the teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public school. Brunson knows that world from the inside. Her mother, Norma Jean Brunson, taught kindergarten in the city’s public schools for decades, and Brunson was one of her students.
The association announced its honorees Oct. 20. Chris Rock, Katori Hall, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jaafar Jackson are among the other honorees. Comedian Roy Wood Jr. will host, and the ceremony premieres on the CCA’s YouTube channel in December.
Allen, 76, a Howard University graduate, brought her own HBCU experience to A Different World when she took the helm in its second season. She produced the series and directed 83 of its 144 episodes. Under her leadership, the campus comedy took on racism, colorism and HIV while keeping Black students’ ambitions at the center of a hit network show. Allen has credited the series with tripling enrollment at historically Black colleges.
The cast of A Different World, the NBC sitcom set at fictional Hillman College, which ran from 1987 to 1993. (Photo: NBC)
Her investment in young people extends well beyond Hillman. In 2001, Allen and her husband, former NBA All-Star Norm Nixon, opened the Debbie Allen Dance Academy in Los Angeles to train young dancers.
The Netflix sequel carries that commitment to a new generation of storytellers. Felicia Pride serves as showrunner. Allen, an executive producer, directed the premiere and reprises her role as Dr. Langhorne.
The series follows Deborah Wayne, played by Maleah Joi Moon, the youngest daughter of Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert. She arrives at her parents’ alma mater determined to build a legacy of her own. Netflix renewed the series Oct. 2, eight days after its debut.
The two campuses already share a familiar face. Cree Summer, who played Freddie Brooks on the original series and returns in the sequel, has also appeared on Abbott Elementary as school librarian Rosalyn Inez.
Brunson, 36, plays second-grade teacher Janine Teagues in a comedy that follows educators who stretch thin budgets, manage crowded classrooms and absorb district bureaucracy. Since its 2021 debut, Abbott has earned 37 Emmy nominations, and its sixth season premiered Oct. 7. Brunson made history in 2022 as the first Black woman to win the Emmy for comedy writing as a solo writer. In 2024, she became the first Black actress in more than four decades to win lead actress in a comedy.
Quinta Brunson in Abbott Elementary, the ABC comedy she created about the teachers at a Philadelphia public school. (Photo: Gilles Mingasson/ABC)
In honoring Allen and Brunson, the Critics Choice Association is recognizing two bodies of work that have shaped how Black families see school, from the second-grade classroom to the college yard.