‘All Rise’ produces episode remotely

The legal drama “All Rise” has become the first U.S. scripted television series to adapt to the pandemic by producing an episode remotely, enlisting its stars to work from home on their own makeup, set design and lighting. The season finale, airing Monday night on CBS, finds Simone Missick’s Judge Lola Carmichael presiding over a Los Angeles Superior Court bench trial via video conference.

Missick said she was exhausted at the end of each shooting day after making her own adjustments to costume and sound, converting her living room into an office and her dining room into a courtroom.

“I did pick up new skills. I think that I could be a location scout-slash-set design co-ordinator. I don’t need to lead the department, but I could be in the background,” Missick laughed in a Zoom interview. “So if this acting stuff doesn’t work out, I could maybe pick up a career doing it virtually because that was the fun part.”

While most full-season shows cut production short due to stay-home orders, “All Rise” creator Greg Spottiswood said he realized that the dialogueheavy nature of his show allowed for remote production. A key challenge — predicting how the legal world would adjust to the novel coronavirus, with prisons becoming outbreak hot spots and video chats replacing in-court hearings.

“The justice system needs to find a way to respond to this moment. Technology is one of the ways that they’re responding to it,” he said.

Spottiswood said producers paid the full crew, even those that weren’t able to work, for the episode.