The NBC/CBS primetime drama "In the Heat of the Night" celebrated its 35th anniversary on Mar. 6, 2023. The series ran for seven seasons and was one of the first national episodic television programs to film exclusively in Georgia. From left to right, series actors Geoffrey Thorne, Randall Franks, Alan Autry and David Hart (Courtesy of Randall Franks Media)
On any given summer day in the late ’80s, the square of a small Georgia town would routinely be filled with curious bystanders and the flashing lights of police cars. With roads blocked off and officers roaming through the streets, one might have thought it was a crime scene or traffic accident rather than the filming of a popular television series.
Thirty-five years ago this month, the television series “In the Heat of the Night” premiered on NBC. The new series, starring the late television legend Carroll O’Connor and Academy Award nominee Howard Rollins, depicted the lives, relationships and political and social relations among the police force and residents of the fictional small town of Sparta, Mississippi.
The show resonated with many Georgia residents who were excited about it being set in the South. One fan was country singer Randall Franks, who went on be cast as Officer Randy Goode for five of the series’ seven seasons.
Although the show was filming in Hammond, Louisiana, at the time, Franks knew it was in his future to be a part of the Sparta landscape.
“I didn’t know how it was going to happen at the time … I had an experience speaking to God and asking him to allow me the opportunity to be involved with this show,” Franks told WABE.
His hopes seemed to have come true, as in the summer of that year, production switched from Louisiana to Georgia in its second season. With the excitement of local fans taking over public shooting locations, the main goal for local crew members was to prove that Atlanta had what it took for the series to take up shop permanently with little to no difficulties.
With “Heat” being one of the first major episodic television projects to film exclusively in Georgia, casting director Shay Griffin knew it was imperative to showcase Georgia’s strongest talent to initially-skeptic L.A.-based producers and directors.
The result was the casting of locals such as Franks and veteran Georgia film and stage actors Afemo Omilami and Crystal Fox, who were cast in prominent supporting roles. Griffin, a three-time Emmy Award nominee, also estimated that roughly 80% of episodic guest roles were filled by Southern actors (the production company offered Griffin a budget later in the run to travel to other states across the South to recruit actors to appear in the series).
Omilami, best known for his roles in “Forest Gump” and the upcoming “Genius: MLK and Malcolm X,” was cast as Jimmy Dawes, who the actor describes as a “cleaver, streetwise hustler” police informant who quickly became a fan favorite among viewers.
Fox, who later starred in Tyler Perry’s “The Have and Have Nots” and “A Fall From Grace,” was an up-and-coming theatre actress when she was offered the role of Luann Corbin, the town of Sparta’s first black female officer. It was a part that Fox was initially reluctant to take, having originally auditioned for a smaller role in her character’s debut episode.
“I auditioned for the role of the young lady that was going to be shot off, so I would only have to work one episode and be off [to pursue other roles]. I had no idea that they were casting for a series regular,” said the North Atlanta High School alum. “I had been through so many auditions and thought, ‘Wow, all this for a girl who’s going to be killed.’ They told me that the last person I had left to audition for was Carroll. I had never seen the show and I asked, ‘Well, where is she?’ and everyone started laughing … he grinned at me and nodded and said ‘thank you’ and left. I get a call a few days later saying that they wanted me for Luann, and I panicked … and I tried to talk them out of it and they said, ‘We understand that, but Carroll wants you.'”
“I knew that there was no other place that had the talent pool like what we had and what we began to create,” said Griffin. “We worked as a team, me and the actors … we all had to support each other and make it as good as we could.”
“It still resonates with people … it’s something that so many actors hope for in their careers that they often don’t get.”
Afemo Omilami, Actor – “Jimmy Dawes“
Another factor in the series’ longevity can be attributed to Covington, Georgia, which doubled as the fictional town of Sparta, Mississippi.
Frank Galline, the set decorator for “Heat,” credits the town’s local businesses with assisting him and other crew members when Georgia had not yet been equipped to handle a long-term episodic production, helping to provide props, construction and other essential resources. He also credits the diverse locations across Atlanta for showcasing the city’s many landscapes, including swamp lands, forests, urban buildings and suburban homes, many of which were used by the show’s crew for filming.
“It must have been awkward for some of [the residents] to allow crews into their homes, but it made them the most popular house on the block,” said the Emmy Award-winning crew member. “Everyone wanted to tell their friends that ‘In the Heat of the Night’ shot there.”
After seven seasons on the air, the series was canceled in 1994, with four made-for-television movies produced and aired throughout the following year.
While those who worked on the program knew that the show was a once-in-a-lifetime experience during its run, they would have never imagined that the show’s success would live on in syndication, nor that they would have helped to pave the way for the current boom of Georgia’s television and film industry.
“We knew that there was something special here, but who would have known? When I first started in the union here, there were only 150, and now there are several thousand,” Galline said.
Fox experienced a full circle moment when she returned to the town recently for the shooting of her upcoming Apple TV series, “The Big Grand Prize.” A resident informed her that the building they were filming in was used for “In the Heat of the Night.”
“It just felt like a personal gift to me,” said Fox. “That show changed my life. And I still can’t believe that we have such a large fan base after all these years the way that we do.”
“It still resonates with people. It was a story about townspeople, of folks just trying to understand each other,” said Omilami, who currently runs the Atlanta-based nonprofit organization Hosea Helps with his wife, Elisabeth. “I have to pinch myself in that after 35 years … I still have people coming up to me every day … it’s something that so many actors hope for in their careers that they often don’t get. I feel so blessed and fortunate to have been a part of it.”
“I wish that I could return back to Sparta … and just relive that time and that place,” said Franks. “When we first started working on the show, we had a very important goal … we wanted to prove that we could [successfully] film in Georgia, to prove that Atlanta actors could stand side by side with the actors who came in from Hollywood … and look where we are now.”
