“I don’t want to go out here looking like an old man trying to be a young man, but I do like some of the forward younger fashions,” said William Stanford Davis (Stan to his friends, Mr. Johnson to his “Abbott Elementary” fans).

The actor doesn’t shy away from red carpet accessories, like a spiked fanny pack or a large diamond brooch, which he wore at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards. In an interview that’s been edited and condensed, Mr. Davis recounts the significance of the brooch.

Tell me about your brooch.

A friend of mine is a designer, and when she showed me the piece, it moved me. I even told my wife, I said, “It reminds me of a piece that I gave my grandmother when I was young.” And that’s basically how it came into my life.

When I was a kid, I would go to this particular corner not far from my house in St. Louis: Easton Avenue and Taylor. And I would stand on the corner and ask guys if they needed their shoes shined. And the thing I wanted to do was buy my grandmother something for Mother’s Day. She raised me. Her name is Josie. Josie Evans. We call her Mama Josie.

I would go in this Goodwill store and look for things to buy my grandmother. They had a case with all this costume jewelry, and you had necklaces and rings and all these things, and I saw a brooch that kind of looked like that. And that’s why this brooch here means a lot to me. It reminds me of the brooch that I got for her.

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