Black-ish star Marcus Scribner teases Junior's 'naked' arrival on Grown-ish : 'He's a new man'
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You've seen Andre Johnson Jr., a.k.a. Junior (Marcus Scribner), grow up over the years on Black-ish, but get ready to see a whole lot more of him now that he's heading to college on Grown-ish.
When Freeform's spin-off series returns for season 5, Junior enrolls at Cal U to embark on his own journey to being "grown" on the heels of big sister Zoey's (Yara Shahidi) graduation. And while Scribner teases that Junior's got a plan to keep his head down and focus on his studies, he won't be able to resist all that higher education has to offer.
"Tune into the premiere episode — you are going to see some things you've never seen. Literally," Scribner tells EW with a laugh. "We start off with a bang. You'll find out what I mean when you watch the episode, but we start out with Junior right into the college life. He's stepping into places he's never stepped before because he's always been a super relationship-oriented guy. He wants to be with a girl for a long period of time. But this Junior, he's a new man. He's figuring out who he wants to be, so it starts out with a bit of a shocking reveal. The season opener's going to be fire, there's a wild scene and it only goes up from there."
Freeform/Mike Taing YARA SHAHIDI
Making the switch permanently from Black-ish to Grown-ish has given Scribner a new perspective on the character he's played for years, and it's also given him the opportunity to do something he's never gotten to do before on any show: "Get naked." Scribner laughs again as he adds, "There's a lot of that this season, which honestly, I was a bit nervous about. But it's been a lot of fun. I like being naked, apparently. There's a lot of tail-chasing and hi-jinx that he gets into in situations where I feel like you normally wouldn't see Junior because he's so levelheaded, but college just kind of brings out a different side of him. I feel like we've all been there."
But it won't just be keg parties and hot hookups for Junior when he gets to college. "Junior's in this new chapter in life where he is like, 'I've done all this, I thought I was taking the right path in life,'" Scribner says. "Junior feels like he's wasted a little bit of time, obviously being that he's now going into college at 22 years old. He's at a different phase of his life as opposed to many of his other freshman classmates, so he's approaching it from an academic sense and really seeing it as an opportunity to enhance his career goals, but not thinking of the advantages of college in a social sense, which a lot of other people bring out of him as the season goes on. He's about his business now. He doesn't have time for all the trivial things that he has in the past, and he's just super hyper-focused."
Freeform/Mike Taing YARA SHAHIDI, MARCUS SCRIBNER
Starting off his college career by feeling like he made a mistake in waiting too long causes Junior to shift his priorities in a big way. "He wants to figure out what the next step of his journey is, and he thinks that it's through college," he says. "He wants to keep his head low, get his degree, get in, get out, get the bag. But college is going to come and smack him in the face and he is going to realize that maybe there's more to it."
No matter how hard Junior tries, he won't be able to ignore all the new potential relationship opportunities that college offers. "There's no Grown-ish without the love, without the drama," he admits. "And there's a lot of interesting characters. Junior's definitely approaching college with more of a business-oriented mind, but those relationships come in and he forges a lot of friendships along the way that kind of take him off of that course, but in an amazing way. And I think what's really dope about this season is all of our characters are kind of forging their own destinies. There's going to be some romances, some love triangles, a lot of drama, but also a lot of joy and happiness and trials and tribulations, everything a young adult goes through."
Freeform/Mike Taing
And after fans watched Zoey's college journey for four seasons, Scribner is excited for everyone to see how Junior's experience is going to be different. "Zoey definitely came in a lot greener; she didn't really know the landscape or what to expect, so it was like a bit of a culture shock for her in comparison to Junior, who's lived in the real world now for a couple years and got some work experience under his belt," he says. "He's coming in with a different view, and I think also the male perspective is different because he goes through some things that I feel like his co-ed classmates won't go through. It's a fresh take."
Grown-ish season 5 premieres Wednesday, July 20, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.
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