How One Day at a Time was able to make an animated special in only eight weeks

TheWrap

Tonight's animated quarantine special, titled "The Politics Episode," would've usually taken seven to eight months to make. But Toronto-based animated studio Smiley Guy, which was enlisted for the job, was able to pull through. “They really blew us away with the speed,” says co-showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett, who came up with the animated special idea. “It was astounding, truly.” "The Politics Episode" was originally intended to be a live-action episode airing close to the election. To capture the actors' voices, Kellett and fellow co-showrunner Mike Royce sent "a lovely guy in a van” to each of their homes to record using sterilized equipment at a safe distance with Kellett, Royce and director Phil Lewis overseeing via Zoom. "Not creepy,” Kellett promised. Actors who weren't quarantined in Los Angeles, including Rita Moreno and Lin-Manuel Miranda, were mailed microphones, while Gloria Estefan had her own studio. “The live version of the show would’ve involved a lot of CGI and stunt people,” says Royce, referring to the episodes flashback-style fantasy sequences. “The animation just made it easier, essentially. We were able to amp it up a bit, but we actually surprised ourselves when we looked back at it. We didn’t change any of the bits."

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• "The Politics Episode" was always intended to be a stylistic departure: "It’s actually a little freaky how much of the original live action script is still there," says co-showrunner Mike Royce. "It’s basically the same because we had always planned to really not have an audience for this one and shoot it over the course of a couple of three days and have all these fantasy sequences. Except we picture them with CGI, and the fight sequence would have been with stunt people and wigs and just making a big joke out of how ridiculous it was."
• Co-showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett on the challenges of returning to work in the coronavirus era: “I mean, how are you doing a scene in Times Square? Are you testing all the extras? I get the luxury of at least having six actors on one stage, and that’s it,” says Kellett. “Now we’re talking about so many factors that need to be taken into account. I cannot imagine Rita Moreno being cool doing a coffee shop scene where we’re bringing in 15 strangers who we don’t know, who are just going to work for the day, who are breathing the same air she’s breathing.”