SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from “Winter Break,” season 4, episode 8 of “Abbott Elementary,” now streaming on Hulu.
Lisa Ann Walter takes center stage in the Christmas episode “Winter Break” of “Abbott Elementary,” which gives fans a nuanced look at her character, the stubborn, ruthless Melissa Schemmenti. The Melissa-centric episode reveals the fraught family dynamic created by her overbearing mother, played by “Godfather” actor Talia Shire. This is the first time we see Melissa’s mother on screen.
Walter says the Schemmenti family dynamic, captured in the Christmas special, mirrors that of her own Italian family.
“I don’t know if your family actually tells you they love you and gives you unsolicited compliments, but that doesn’t happen in a Sicilian household,” says Walter. “There’s a lot of judgment. Very rarely is it an outright compliment. So it felt very familiar to me to come from such a family.”
Gilles Mingasson
The star of “The Parent Trap” remembers meeting Shire the day before filming. Shire, she says, repeatedly inquired about Melissa’s romantic options on the show during their first interaction together.
“She had an instant character,” Walter says with a laugh, adding that she appreciated Shire’s questions. “She was very motherly. That was our relationship from the beginning.”
Walter says Shire also asked about her real-life children, and how Walter wants to decorate her new house. Shire’s questioning cultivated the mother-daughter dynamic on set, Walter says.
Melissa’s sister Kristin Marie (Lauren Weedman) is a recurring “Abbott Elementary” character and first appeared in the season 2 episode “Wrong Delivery,” but the rest of her extended family was new to the show. The ensemble imbues the societal pressures and cultural expectations for Melissa, particularly how the Schemmenti family grills her for not being married and having children.
“Melissa takes all that heat and turns it into ‘Oh yeah? Well, I’m going to show you,” says Walter. “She insists on making this [dinner] a spectacular success.”
In the previous episode, “Winter Show,” Melissa approached culinary preparation with a rigorous mindset, which is directly related to Melissa’s desire to impress her loved ones. “Gradually you see that she really needs her mother’s acceptance and approval,” says Walter. “When she gets that little compliment from her mother, it changes her world. She won Christmas. That felt very, very familiar to me.”
Walter says that fellow Abbott teacher Barbara Howard (Sheryl Lee Ralph) has become family to Melissa in a way.
Gilles Mingasson
Early in the episode, Melissa’s uncle Archie makes a racist comment about the arrival of Barbara and her husband Gerald. Melissa immediately reprimands her relative and sends him upstairs before apologizing profusely to the Howards.
“Throughout the episode, she tolerates all the ribs, she tolerates all the backhanded compliments and outright insults,” Walter says. “But as soon as this man opens his mouth to Barbara, she’s ready to fight.”
Walter adds that a particularly important moment in the episode occurs when the guests leave Melissa’s house. As each character says goodbye, Barbara hugs her and offers words of encouragement. She tells Melissa that while her family may never directly acknowledge Melissa’s successes, she has proven them wrong.
“When Barbara leaves, she walks out the door and gives [Melissa] a hug. The first time she did it and hugged me, she said, “They may not tell you, but I will.” You did that,” Walter says of how well the dinner went. “There was such love in a Sheryl hug for Lisa that it just shocked me.”
Walter says that this gesture from her co-star, after three chaotic days of production for the scenes at Melissa’s house, had enormous meaning to her off-screen.
“There’s room for the actors to have moments,” Walter says. “Whether they’re on the page or just building because of how we all feel about each other now, they give us space for real, truthful moments of heartfelt emotion.”