Brian Jordan Alvarez likes to work on his birthday. He tells me as much on the afternoon of his 37th this past July. We’re in a hotel ballroom in Pasadena at the Television Critics Association press tour, where he’s doing his first gauntlet of interviews to promote English Teacher, the comedy series that he created, writes, directs, and stars in.
“This is the best job in the world. So for me, if I get to work on my birthday, it’s the best gift,” he says. “And I usually have for the past few years. Like three years ago, I was quarantining in New Zealand for M3GAN on my birthday,” referring to the hit horror film featuring a murderous robotic dancing doll he starred in. The next night, he’d be flying back to New Zealand to continue filming its sequel.
“Quarantining in New Zealand for M3GAN” is quite the sentence I tell him. He laughs: “That’s going to be the title of my autobiography.”
