FOR YEARS, Tyler James Williams thought of himself as a “hard gainer”—a guy who just can’t pack on muscle. He played an adolescent Chris Rock on the sitcom Every-body Hates Chris for much of the mid-aughts, but nearly a decade later, well into his 20s, he was still getting calls to play a certain type. “I was trying to read for roles that were my age and I couldn’t get out of high school,” he says.
That formerly stuck student went on to become a particularly impressive schoolteacher: Williams, now 30, is best known as the rigid but adorable Gregory Eddie on the ABC mockumentary for which he’s earned an Emmy nom and cemented his status as an Internet
