On its surface, the CBS series All Rise is a courthouse drama that follows the lives of the judges, prosecutors and public defenders that populate its world, as well as the bailiffs, clerks and cops that are a part of the legal process. But in Season 2, it’s also dealing with the current pandemic and Black Lives Matter while addressing the inequalities and flaws that are present in the justice system.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with actress Simone Missick about the new season and her character, Judge Lola Carmichael, who is currently trying to sort through impending motherhood. She also talked about what she was most proud of with Season 1, what she’s most excited about with Season 2, addressing real-world issues, getting to see more of Lola’s husband (played by Todd Williams), why it’s been comforting to incorporate COVID into the world of the show, and how the pandemic shifted storylines.

Collider: First of all, I was definitely very impressed with what you guys managed to pull off at the end of last season, already having to shoot the last episode during the pandemic, and it’s been interesting to see how you’re handling everything this season. What were you most proud of with Season 1 and what were you most hopeful about, going into Season 2?

SIMONE MISSICK: Season 1 was such a feat, in terms of finding an audience on a network that doesn’t typically gravitate towards these kinds of shows. CBS is definitely a network that has a lot of cop dramas, and a lot of CSI and NCIS [shows]. For years, it was JAG and Blue Bloods. Those are all very white male-driven, side of justice-centered stories. Our show is female heavy and multi-cultural, and we expose the other side of the justices, the people who are often trampled by the rubber stamp policies and laws that exist within our society. And so, being able to find an audience and a loyal audience in the CBS family of viewers was an impressive feat. And then, we were also able to innovate, like you said, with the last episode of last season, being the first scripted drama show to bring a virtual episode to the screen and to deal with COVID, and now that being the jumping-off point for this second season.

The thing that I’m most excited about for Season 2 is that we just really get to explore the black female experience, in light of this past year, with the protests, with COVID, and with the disparities that exist within the healthcare system for poor people and people of color, no matter the economic background, as well as what is happening with Lola as a mother. She’s a woman who is about to become a mom and balance career with motherhood. I’m just really excited about all of the different points that we are looking to explore this season and how those changes affect every relationship. I’m looking forward to seeing the evolution of Mark and Lola’s relationship, as two friends who’ve known each other for 15 plus years, but have a very different experience in America, and what that does.

You’ll get to see more of Lola’s relationship to her husband, and them being very career oriented, driven people who now have to sacrifice in order to raise this child. You’ll also see Lola’s relationship with her mother, which has always been strained and difficult because her mom was a career activist and she often put community and service ahead of family and her personal desires or needs or wants. And so, Lola will have to examine her perception of her mother’s choices, in light of the choices that she will have to make. It’s a really rich, fertile jumping off point for this second season that I hope really connects with a lot of our audience.

In the first episode, you jumped right in, addressing the pandemic, giving time and space to Black Lives Matter, and then dropping this pregnancy bomb on the audience. When it comes to handling something like Black Lives Matter on a TV series, it’s something that’s so hard to distill down to scenes in an episode or two, so what was most important to you to get across?

MISSICK: Our writers really wanted to use the protests, which affected so many people globally, as the jumping off point. It wasn’t just protests that were happening in America, which was what was so amazing and unifying about this time. We also saw protests happening in countries, all throughout the world. What’s important to recognize is that there is no way to distill it. The way that the Black Lives Matter movement affects Luke as a sheriff and someone, who is now entering into the DA’s office as a Black man, is going to be different from how it affects Lola, who has left the DA’s office and is now a judge as a Black woman. There are so many stories to be told with just that as the jumping off point, and yet it filters into so many different things. It filters into Emily’s storyline, with having a defendant who is in jail, awaiting trial, being shuffled along through the system, having a pre-existing condition, being a single mother with two young children, and she dies in custody from COVID, despite the efforts from her lawyer to get her out on what would normally be an offense where she would go home.

Our show just highlights how these points in history affect the individual in ways that, if you’re just reading the headlines from your comfortable space in wherever America, it doesn’t affect you. There are so many people who say, “I don’t know anyone who has COVID. I’ve never met anyone who had it. I don’t know a single person who has had it.” And then there are other people who can say, “I’ve lost 15 people to COVID.” Our show has often tried to bring these stories that are very specific to a large audience, in order to highlight the universality of the human experience for people and to get people to look outside of their zip code or their box, and examine how we are all alike and dealing with similar things, just in different ways.

It’s so nice to see Lola’s husband in the same zip code that she’s in. Did you guys ever joke about what he could be up to and who he could be up to it with, in all of the time that we didn’t see him?

MISSICK: Oh, goodness! There was one episode in the first season, where he’s talking about a female co-worker and Lola’s like, “Who is this?!” He makes a remark about her not being single and Lola is like, “She must be cute because otherwise you wouldn’t feel the need to tell me that she’s in a relationship.” I forget exactly how it rolls out. But we have definitely joked about what Robin is doing in DC. What’s interesting is that a lot of people have speculated, “Are they trying to get Mark and Lola together, or are they gonna break up because the husband lives long distance? What’s happening with Lola and Robin?” Some of it is story. Our show creator and his wife had to spend a considerable amount of time apart because she was working and he was working on our show here [in Los Angeles]. And I know that struggle. My husband (Dorian Missick) is on a show that shoots in New York and I’m on a show that shoots here. Especially during COVID, we have not been able to see each other as often as we would because of quarantine laws between New York and L.A. How often do you get two weeks off to come home, and then go back and quarantine for two weeks.

That was real for us, for both our showrunner/show creator and myself. We both identify with what long distance marriages look like, at times. And then, other parts of it were just logistical. Todd Williams, who plays my husband, is on another show. For the purpose of scheduling, he just couldn’t be at two places at one time, so that also informed story, in a way that has allowed for our audience’s imagination to run wild. Thankfully, this season, we will get to see more of him and we’ll get to see more of Lola as a wife, trying to step into motherhood and also get into a new groove with her husband, who is normally not there. I always joke with my husband that, whenever he comes back from being gone for awhile, I’m like, “You’re like a feral cat. I’ve gotta get you back in the mode of their being a woman in the house.” He’ll have the music blaring and he’ll be watching documentaries about the ‘80s and the crack epidemic. I’m like, “Dude, can we just bring it down to an equal level of estrogen and testosterone in the environment?” It’ll be nice to see Lola and Robin have to figure it out, too.

What’s it like to shoot a show that has a pandemic going on, in a world with an actual pandemic? How is it affecting the shoot while it’s also affecting the characters, and has that been a surreal reflection?

MISSICK: You know, it’s been comforting, in some ways. I feel so sorry for actors that I know, and television shows that are either period pieces, where it’s the future or the past so they’re not dealing with it, or the show has just decided not to touch it, because there is a level of safety that you feel in being able to wear a mask in a scene, or being able to wear a shield, or having plexiglass around you. COVID is a real thing. It is something that we are all constantly dealing with. The other part of it is that it has definitely affected the way that we shoot, in terms of finding creative ways to have intimate moments. It’s a hand touch or a hug instead of a deep kiss because, for safety purposes, you have to adjust. Our show has figured out a way of shooting, in that we will have sometimes as many as 15 cameras on set that aren’t being operated on set. They’re being operated remotely by our camera crew. And so, you can step onto a set and it’s just you and the other actors and 15 cameras, and you don’t have the crew there necessarily dollying the shot, unless it is a dolly or a steadi-cam, and then you have one camera person there. Sometimes it’s just you and the other actor, which feels very much like theater and it feels very real. As an actor, you do have to have that dual mind where you go, “Okay, I know that we’re having this very intimate moment, but there are 30 people standing right there.” You don’t have that right now during COVID, which not only increases the safety, but then it helps you to drop into the scene in a very real way. So, there have been gifts, if you can say that, when it comes to COVID shooting, that came very unexpected, but it allows for an authenticity that so often we don’t get to have.

It’s interesting because the first season of a show is when you set everything up, so that in the second season, you have this level of comfort and you don’t have to re-establish all of that. But with everything going on, it seems like you have to find your footing all over again because things are so different.

MISSICK: Yeah, and I actually relished that. Like you said, the first season of the show, you establish it. And then, the second season and those subsequent seasons, some shows will just coast through and they’ll play along with the different relationships, but you know what you’re gonna get. Sometimes you watch and you’re like, “Oh, okay, this is that season. We’re dealing with that particular subject with these two people, and this is expected.” Because our show chose to be very now with what is happening, we will see it continue to evolve, as the state of affairs in our country and globally evolve. For an actor, that’s exciting, to not know exactly where things are going to go next and to also be able to deal with things that are so present. And I think that it’s also good for the audience because I’ve been able to see, from our fans on social media, they’re like, “I did not see that coming,” which is exciting. That’s what you want.

Has there been anything that you had conversations about or that you were hoping you’d be able to do in Season 2, that you can’t or haven’t been able to do because of how you have to work around the pandemic now?

MISSICK: What’s interesting is that the pandemic shifted television schedules for everyone, really. Shows that we’re supposed to shoot over the summer and come out in the fall, they’re now shooting and releasing simultaneously, in the later fall and winter. But for our show, we were supposed to be following the election in the United States, roughly on the same schedule with the show and there was going to be storylines that fed into that. When it came time to actually come to the table, it was very real to our showrunners that people were probably going to have election fatigue, by the time the show came out. Thank God, they thought about it because this has been such an exhausting few months, and especially in the past few weeks, for so many Americans, when it comes to this election. I can’t imagine then asking people who normally like to escape into a story to then deal with that on screen, as well. And so, who knows if that will come back in Season 3, in terms of the storylines that they were originally anticipating. I know that at the end of Season 1, there were supposed to be a lot of relationship changes that did not happen because of COVID. It’s interesting to see different relationships being explored, in a way that they were not initially supposed to be explored, just because you have to shift and re-calibrate. I think everything happens for a reason. I’m very happy with the way that our Season 2 is shaping up. The things that our characters are being able to deal with on screen are exciting and different and new. I love it.

I love the clever little twist of moving Mark and Lola’s friendship from an enclosed stairwell to a roof outside, so that we can still see them have those moments, but in a safe way.

MISSICK: Yeah. Our writers and producers just never cease to amaze me. That was one of the things that fans just love so much. They’re like, “We’ve gotta have the stairwell scenes.” Even after watching the first episode, they’re like, “But are they going to go back to the stairwell?” And it’s like, “No, guys, it’s now the rooftop. The very open-air, COVID-safe roof is where they will be having their little pow-wows.” It’s something that I certainly relish. I love working Wilson [Bethel]. He’s a phenomenal actor. There’s a comfort that he and I have, and a trust that we have as acting partners, where we pretty much know what we’re going to get whenever we come into these moments with each other in these scenes. There is a level of, “Okay, these are the fun scenes.” There are other scenes that have different challenges and are fun for different reasons, but there is such an easiness between Mark and Lola’s relationship that it’s great to be able to have it still, and to have it be COVID safe.

All Rise airs on Monday nights on CBS.