Worlds Apart

Actors love a challenge.

For Simone Missick, the challenges are doubled, at the very least, as she portrays two very different characters in two very different series, in two countries, often filming at the same time.

Missick stars as Lola Carmichael, a young lawyer promoted to judge in the new CBS series All Rise. Carmichael is a progressive, unorthodox judge, but she has the utmost respect for the law and understands the gravitas of her position. She has friends in the courthouse, some who were colleagues just a short time ago, and now she must judge their cases. The series shoots in Los Angeles.

Missick also portrays Trepp, a no-nonsense, stone cold bounty hunter on Netflix's Altered Carbon, which films in Vancouver. Altered Carbon takes place in a dark future where human consciousness has been digitized and can be put into new bodies or "sleeves," making them all but immortal.

Trepp is hired to find and capture an ancient warrior for some people who want to return him to the prison in which he spent 250 years. Trepp has occasional allies, but no real friends. Her motivation is simple. She needs to make money so that she can find her brother, her only family.

So, how does an actress manage to get two such disparate roles, and how does she handle moving from one to the other? Missick says, "I was working on Altered Carbon in Vancouver from January on. And I got the call that they wanted to see me for All Rise. I found out they wanted to meet me on Thursday. I worked all day Friday until about three in the morning.

"I hopped on a plane Saturday morning and got to L.A., did a two hour long audition and then hopped back on the plane and flew back to Vancouver. And once I got back to Vancouver, I went to work Monday and then found out on Tuesday that they wanted me to do the show and to be Lola.

"So I was definitely doing both. Then when it came time to actually shoot the pilot, I think I got off on a Thursday, flew in on Friday to do the fittings and the camera tests and the table read. And then we started shooting on Saturday and we shot that show for 10 days, the pilot episode.

"And then I flew back to Vancouver and kept working for another three months. And I think I had a good 20 days in between wrapping Altered Carbon and going into full production for All Rise. So, I was definitely taking both women into both spaces."

If that sounds incredibly difficult, Missick took it all in stride. She says, "It was so funny everyone kept saying, 'Are you okay? How are you doing this? Are you okay?' It was like, 'I think I'm good.'

"As an actor it's exciting to be able to step into different roles and to be able to do them simultaneously. I think you don't really wrap your mind around, or your head around what that is. You just have to put your head down and deal with what's in front of you.

"And I had the good fortune of having a great acting coach in L.A. who would often talk about as an artist you have the responsibility to be able to be in full conversation and laughing and then in the next cry as if you've just lost the love of your life, or a child. And then in the next moment after that, continue to laugh and be normal and that that is the way that all of us should be able to access our emotions and to access our instruments.

"And so I think that having that kind of model and practice of training got me prepared to be able to be a character set in the dystopian future on some far off planet with electrodes popped into her head. And then come back and be a lawyer in modern day Los Angeles, trying to be one of the few female, black lawyers to become a judge.

"And I think it has to be that understanding that we are not one thing at any moment. We are all things at all times. And as storytellers you just kind of have to accept it."

Missick recognizes her good fortune in being able to do all this work, and she takes none of it for granted. She says, "I recognize also the fortune of being able to do that. That doesn't happen for a lot of women that look like me that are from where I'm from and don't necessarily have a famous uncle or father or whatever. So when the opportunity comes, you have to be ready.

"And I was in Los Angeles for 10 years before I booked Luke Cage, which for me was life changing and career shifting. And it was a lot of years of preparation, of thinking, 'Okay, when this happens, what do I not want to say I can't do.' And what do I not want to say, 'Sorry, I can't go in for that or I don't think I can handle that or manage that.'"

"And so I had 10 years of planning and work. And so you spend a lot of time figuring out where the holes in your craft are. And if somebody asked me to pick up a gun, would I know what I was doing when I did it? If someone asked me to do some stunts, would I look like a dork? Can I handle nine pages of rapid fire dialogue at a clip and still connect to other actors?

"And so, I mean you can't obviously be prepared for it all, but it's certainly exciting to be challenged by things that aren't just waitress number three or the girlfriend. I'm just diving into it head first."

Disparate as they may seem, Missick's characters have a lot in common, as well. For one thing, both are incredibly strong female characters.

Missick says, "It's the powerful writing that we have on Altered Carbon, the writing staff headed by Alison Schapker was just strong and powerful and a fresh voice on genre. [The series is based on] a book that is written by Richard K. Morgan. It's very much male driven and I know that in the first season where Laeta [Kalogridis, creator of the series] was the show writer and creator, she definitely wanted the female voice to be strong and for that to be powerful.

"Then I think that in season two Alison Schapker really picked up and carried the torch and wanted to make sure that all the women that were on screen were fully realized and fully formed and coming from a very real place. That's the beautiful thing about my character is that for all of the piss and vinegar, at the end of the day, she's just a woman who was desperately fighting to keep her family together.

"And in a society where life is so fragile and so precious and so used as a commodity by people in power, this is a woman who is trying to maintain that family as best as she can.

"And with Lola, this is a woman who looks at her community and the city of Los Angeles at the justice system and the problems that are within it, and she looks to be the solution, which is very altruistic and very self-sacrificing. Whereas Trepp is very selfish. You know, on the outside it's, 'I just want my money, give me my money, do you have my money, where do I need to go to get my money?'

"But when you find out why she's so cut and dry, at the end of the day, both of these women have the same motivation, which is community, whether it's just within their four walls of their home or if it's within their city. It's community protecting their community."

Missick also feels an obligation to her community in playing Lola. She says, "I grew up watching shows like Ally McBeal and I remember my mother loved L.A. Law and I remember when Judging Amy came on. A lot of times when you see women of color, they're not the main storyline in the legal drama. You know, Viola Davis definitely changed that for a lot of us.

"But we rarely see the perspective of the judge and then for her to be a black woman. If there have been more than five, it didn't center around her. She was a part of a larger story. And so there's obviously the idea of being the center of the story. That's the one huge gift that this show is, and the other is for her to be a judge and to see the legal system through that lens.

"So often we see the lawyers and we see the people of color and people of less fortune being kind of trampled by the legal system. That's a narrative that we know very much. We see it in our daily news feed, the news cycle.

"But I feel like All Rise, because you look at it [from the judge's perspective as well, you get to understand how these things happen, how the break down in the justice system happens and what is possible when you have someone who refuses to just rubber stamp people's lives. And so I think it's also hopeful, which is amazing to be able to give people a sense of hope and fairness and justice in the world that we only often hear about the injustices.

"And we see Lola deal with that as well, where she feels as though maybe she doesn't have it all together. Maybe she isn't right all the time, maybe her choices aren't as sound as she thinks they are.

"And just understand that the people who are the lawyers and the judges and the police officers that we see are still just human beings dealing with the same set of circumstances that most of us are dealing with. But unfortunately their actions or mistakes or prejudices and biases affect other people's lives for generations. I think that's what the show kind of gives you a glimpse into.

"Because you're making decisions that affect people's lives and if you get it wrong, other people's lives could be affected even more. And obviously there's the joy of getting it right, not overcharging someone and not handing down a felony conviction when really it is just a misdemeanor. All of those things are the feel good part about the justice system.

"But I can't imagine being a person who has to be the one to argue for someone's freedom. And all that that entails and the number of sleepless nights that you have. There was this really great storyline that the writers had written, where Lola decides to give a car thief a second chance and she lets him off on a misdemeanor.

"He goes out and steals a car and it goes on a high speed chase and ends up dying in the car crash. And so she has this guilt about 'if I had just locked him up and if I hadn't given him a slap on the wrist, he'd still be alive. His daughter would still have a father, his girlfriend would still have her partner,' all of those things.

"And there's this really beautiful scene between Paul McCrane, who's on the show playing a very staunch conservative judge, and he says basically that we've all been there. We all have those cases that keep us up at night. No human being has the ability to tell the future. You just can't. And sometimes even we get fooled.

"And it was a very powerful moment because it's understanding that these people have to wrestle with all of the things that they have to wrestle with when they go home. It's not always just, 'what'd you do today honey,' 'Oh, you know, just put 10 people in jail for the next if you combine the numbers, 400 years of their lives.'

"You know, I hope there is a level of empathy and remorse and sadness about the state of our country when it comes to the justice system, and then the desire to make it better."

To her fellow artists, Missick has a message. "I think that it's important, the work that we do, because we are changing lives and it feels good to be able to stand behind the work that I do. I get the loveliest messages from fans who say, 'I want to be Lola when I grow up,' or, 'I'm a lawyer and, and looking at this show just really renews my hope.'

"And then I've had people who've said, 'your role was the only thing that got me through after my mother died' or 'I was going through a really dark time and watching your work on the shows is what got me through.

"And I think it's important for us to recognize as storytellers that we are changing people's lives. We might not be curing cancer, we might not be brain surgeons, but the arts and storytelling are what allow for people to transform to a different place outside of their circumstances and then possibly come back to their circumstances and find hope.

"So I just want to thank my fellow actors and writers and directors, women and men of all colors and shades for doing the work that they do because it is important and you know, to be in Altered Carbon, playing a woman who is married to a woman in the future. I mean that's a great way to tell a story too.

"So we always have to keep thinking outside of the box because representation is important and inclusion is important because we want to continue for people to feel encouraged, inspired."