One Day at a Time is getting animated to get around the coronavirus shutdown

Deadline

Co-showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett, whose husband is a cartoonist, came up with the idea of doing an animated episode and pitched it to fellow co-showrunner Mike Royce. Work on animated series has been able to proceed amid the coronavirus shutdown because episodes can be assembled remotely. So the One Day at a Time cast will come together for an animated special airing this spring, revolving around the presidential election and Penelope’s conservative family visiting. "In my 97 years, I’ve never known of a multicam comedy to animate a single episode as a special. Even this I get to experience," says One Day at a Time executive producer Norman Lear. "This was always a special episode about the election; it’s not connected to any storyline this season," reports Deadline's Nellie Andreeva, noting that fellow Sony TV series Community also once did an animated episode. "The original idea was to do it live-action with fantasy elements, possibly using VFX. When the pandemic hit and halted TV production, the creators decided to make it animated as it’s not part of the arc of the season and has so many fantasy elements that would lend themselves to animation perfectly. The script was rewritten with that in mind." Kellett says of the animated special: "As we all know, it’s hard to keep One Day At a Time off the air. During this unprecedented time, we wanted to find a way to keep our family – on camera and behind the scenes – together and create more entertaining content for our fans who are self-distancing at home. This animated special gives us an exciting opportunity to imagine the Alvarez family in a colorful new way while continuing to tell important and relevant stories.”