How 'Social Distance' filmed an entire show in quarantine: 'Like making a student film'

There were just seven months between the day Hilary Weisman Graham came up with the idea for “Social Distance” and the Netflix series’ premiere Thursday.

Normally, the process to make a TV show takes years and includes inception, pitching, casting, shooting and editing.

“We wanted to get it out before the pandemic is over,” the “Orange is the New Black” writer told the Daily News of the coronavirus era-set show.

Turns out, the pandemic isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but “Social Distance” lives entirely in shutdowns, filmed on FaceTime and Zoom and Nest.

Real-life couples and family members were cast to act across from each other, including Daphne Rubin-Vega (“In the Heights”), husband Tom Costanzo and son Luca Costanzo; Danielle Brooks (“Orange Is the New Black”) and mom LaRita Brooks; husband and wife Dylan and Becky Ann Baker; Peter Scanavino (“Law & Order: SVU”) and son Leo Bai-Scanavino.

“(Casting director) Jen Eusten made a huge list. We know everyone who is married,” Weisman Graham joked. “If you’re living with another actor, we know who you are.”

Mike Colter, who plays a barber whose shop has been shut down by the state, had to convert a small bedroom in his house so it looked like a studio apartment.

The Bakers proved perfect, already owning a vacation home near the water, exactly how Weisman Graham had scripted the episode they’re in. But the isolated nature of their cabin in the woods posed one problem: bad Wi-Fi.

“I didn’t realize until I saw the first edit that Dylan had three to four days of scruff on his face because the quality of the video I was getting on my computer was so bad,” Weisman Graham laughed.

For the Brooks’ episode, Marsha Stephanie Blake, who played LaRita’s daughter, brought along her real-life daughter Rocco Luna, who played Danielle’s daughter. Danielle Brooks plays a home nurse who watches her daughter from carefully placed cameras in their apartment while she’s gone all day taking care of her patient, until Blake’s character takes in the young girl.

“We needed a Black woman with a daughter that had to be that specific age, 6,” Weisman Graham said. “A 10-year-old you could leave alone. A 4-year-old, you would hate that woman. It had to be just right.”

The finale of “Social Distance,” about a young Black man and his middle-aged boss fighting over anti-racism protests, proved the most difficult. Originally, the role was written for a man in his early 30s, but Weisman Graham and Eusten had trouble finding an actor of that age still living at home with his parents. So they pivoted younger and “Orange is the New Black” creator Jenji Kohan, an executive producer on “Social Distance,” went to “Orange” actress Samira Wiley and her 18-year-old nephew, “When They See Us” star Asante Blackk.

Blackk’s father, Ayize Ma’at, had never acted, but he used to perform as a slam poet, and was cast as the boss.

“We knew he had stage presence,” Weisman Graham said.

Cameras were shipped around the country to the actors, who were tasked with setting up their own rigs and lights, doing their own costumes and makeup. For some shoots, they used iPhone 11s and the FiLMiC Pro app.

“The actors in the real world, as they should be, are treated with kid gloves and whisked in and whisked out. They don’t get to see a lot of the behind the scenes. There’s a lot of ‘us’ and ‘them,’” Weisman Graham said. “Actors are paid so much more, when you’re an A-lister, that there’s a hierarchy.”

But not so much during the making of “Social Distance.”

“This all sort of harkens back to us all starting out in the business when we were breaking in or making a student film,” Weisman Graham says. “It was all very democratic.”

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