Simone Missicks 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, shes 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 were 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.

Im thankful for the cancellation, because I wouldnt have been able to become an executive producer, the 40-year-old actor said. I wouldnt have been able to work with OWN. I wouldnt 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 its 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 executive producer and the perfect, yet unexpected timing of her journey in TV and film.

Youve been able to really level up and take All Rise to another level. Not only with it finding a new home on OWN, but youre also an executive producer. How does it feel this season, especially, given the journey that youve been on with this show?

It feels as if its truly my show. There is something to being the lead of a show. People say its your show, but its certainly quite an ensemble. I have an amazing group of actors that I get to work with for these past three seasons. But being in this new executive producer role allows me to take care of them in a way that feels right. It allows me to have a real say in some of the things, some of the storylines and some of the ways in which we approach the season. Also, give whatever I can in terms of insight for directors and actors that we end up working with. It just makes it truly feel like a complete creative process.

A lot of times as actors, we get scripts. Im not saying that this is this show, but you go, now, why are they doing this? You dont know the end goal. You dont know the arc that they have for the story or for your character. For this, I have a fuller picture in order to try to help the show just succeed in a way that I believe that we all have that hope for it to do. Especially on OWN and with that network being a very woman-centered, a very Black woman-centered network. To be able to walk in that door as an executive producer, alongside Dee Harris-Lawrence, who is our showrunner, feels like we are being very intentional for that OWN audience, while still making sure that the All Rise audience that fell in love with us on CBS is taken care of as well. That theyre getting the storylines that they want, because Ive been there and shes been there since the very beginning. It just feels so right. It feels like, short of having walked in the door as an executive producer, this is the best way to go about it.