By Ryan Pearson, Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --The legal drama "All Rise" has become the first U.S. scripted television series to adapt the 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 court room.
"I did pick up new skills. I think that I could be a location scout-slash-set design coordinator. 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 dialogue-heavy 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 hotspots 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. While the show could produce more episodes remotely in a second season if necessary, he's anxious to get back to sets and real-world locations.
Missick said her mother-in-law in Atlanta had been hospitalized with COVID-19 for eight days, with symptoms serious enough to require a ventilator. She had fully recovered by the time Missick began shooting, but it brought the coronavirus crisis close to home for the 38-year-old actress.
In her downtime after production, Missick has enjoyed Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere" and the Netflix series "Unorthodox." But she's been struck by how far away from today's reality the action on the screen can feel.
"Everything is BC. It's 'before coronavirus.' You're watching people — they're in restaurants, they're hugging each other. You're like, 'God, I remember what that was like.' Now, I think every show that comes after is going to have to deal with what this pandemic is."
In NBC’s “Brilliant Minds,” Zachary Quinto Plays Doctor–In A Role Inspired By Physician/Author Oliver Sacks
There's a great moment in the first episode of the new NBC medical drama "Brilliant Minds" when it becomes very clear that we're not dealing with a typical TV doctor.
Zachary Quinto is behind the wheel of a car barreling down a New York City parkway, packed with hospital interns, abruptly weaving in and out of lanes, when one of them asks, "Does anyone want to share a Klonopin?" — a drug sometimes used to treat panic disorders.
"Oh, glory to God, yes, please," says Quinto, reaching an arm into the back seat. The intern then breaks the pill in half and gives a sliver to the driver, who swallows it, as the other interns share stunned looks.
Quinto, playing the character Dr. Oliver Wolf, is clearly not portraying any dour, by-the-rules doctor here — he's playing a character inspired by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the path-breaking researcher and author who rose to fame in the 1970s and was once called the "poet laureate of medicine."
"He was someone who was tirelessly committed to the dignity of the human experience. And so I feel really grateful to be able to tell his story and to continue his legacy in a way that I hope our show is able to do," says Quinto.
He's a fern-loving doctor
"Brilliant Minds" takes Sack's personality — a motorcycle-riding, fern-loving advocate for mental health who died in 2015 at 82 — and puts him in the present day, where the creators theorize he would have no idea who Taylor Swift is or own a cell phone. The series debuts Monday on NBC, right after "The Voice."
"It's almost as if we're imagining what it would have been like if Oliver Sacks had been born at a different time," says Quinto. "We use the real life person as our North Star through everything we're doing and all the... Read More