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Simone Missick’s rise has been amazing to watch.
Many fans fell in love with the Detroit-born actor, who started her acting journey as a theater arts minor at Howard University, as Misty Knight in “The Defenders.” She reprised the role in “Iron Fist” and in the series famous for breaking Netflix in 2016, “Luke Cage.” Missick proved then to be a force.
Currently, she’s in the third season of her first leading television role on “All Rise.” In the show, she stars as Lola Carmichael, the hopeful judge dedicated to making the justice system more equitable while still living a messy, often chaotic and complicated life. As she takes the bench to rule on decisions around police brutality, sexual violence and immigration, one of the most compelling things about the show is that it allows its lead to be human.
“I love playing smart and capable women who excel at what they do professionally, but I think a lot of times, we expect for those characters not to be flawed,” Missick said. “We expect for their mistakes and their missteps to be ones that we’re OK with, because we might have made them. That is the gift of Lola in a lot of ways.”
Despite a loyal fanbase, CBS canceled the legal drama in May 2021 after plenty of drama behind the scenes. Missick said she was disappointed about the news, but chalked it up to the nature of the game. But after a petition and support from Oprah Winfrey herself — who happened to be on a vision board Missick made years ago — the show found a new home on OWN in September 2021. And that came with a new title for Missick: executive producer. She called the alignment “kismet.”
“I’m thankful for the cancellation, because I wouldn’t have been able to become an executive producer,” the 40-year-old actor said. “I wouldn’t have been able to work with OWN. I wouldn’t have been able to say that Oprah Winfrey is my boss. We see our favorite shows get canceled. We see things not come back. We see them not give those characters or storylines their full due, but it’s called show business. That business part of it is very, very, very impactful to the art that we get to make.”
Missick breaks down “All Rise,” her new role as…
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