(L-R) Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson celebrating winning the NBA Finals in 1998.

Jack Smith/AP

Insider spoke to "The Last Dance" director Jason Hehir about the challenges to get the ESPN docuseries ready two months earlier than originally planned.

The deep-dive into the 1998 NBA championship run by the Chicago Bulls was to air in June during the NBA Finals.

Hehir has been editing the 10-part documentary for over a year, and since New York issued shelter-in-place in March due to the coronavirus, has been doing it from home.

Hehir said that the biggest challenge has been the lack of face-to-face interaction.

"We had five edit rooms so I can no longer walk in and out of rooms and collaborate with people," he said.

"The Last Dance" premieres on ESPN April 19.

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With a major pause on all professional sports due to the coronavirus pandemic, fans have been stuck at home watching replays of classic games and seeing anchors on ESPN's flagship show "SportsCenter" fill time with endless top 10 highlights.

But behind the scenes, the worldwide leader in sports has been frantically trying to get one of its most anticipated documentaries to audiences earlier than originally planned.

ESPN's "The Last Dance" is a 10-part docuseries on the Chicago Bulls' historic quest for a sixth NBA championship in 1998 (it will air on Netflix outside of the US). It was originally to air in June, to coincide with the NBA Finals, but with no more sports on the calendar for the foreseeable future leaving a gaping hole in ESPN's programming, "The Last Dance" will now premiere on the network beginning April 19 and air on Sunday nights over the following five weeks.

The original plan was to have all the Bulls players show up for a red carpet premiere

"The Last Dance" director, Jason Hehir ("Andre the Giant," "The Fab Five"), told Insider moving up the air date hasn't been a big issue because for over a year now he's been living through his own personal quarantine to edit the documentary.

"My lifestyle has been the same for some time, which is eat, sleep, and edit," Hehir said over the phone Wednesday from his New York apartment where he's been overseeing postproduction since New York began shelter-in-place in March.

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Hehir said the original deadline to hand in "The Last Dance" to ESPN was in mid-May, around the same time ESPN was to do a red carpet premiere in New York City which hopefully would have had all of the Bulls from the 1997-1998 team in attendance for a showing of the first couple of episodes.

Michael Jordan.

Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

With the coronavirus changing everything, the goal became to get the docuseries out as soon as possible. Heir said he and his team are currently working on the final episode and that the first five are completely finished.

Each episode has a running time of an hour, and ESPN will air two new episodes every Sunday night. Hehir leaves no stone unturned in chronicling the 1990s Chicago Bulls dynasty that didn't capture one three-peat of NBA Championships but two between 1991 and 1998.

Insider has seen most of "The Last Dance" (promise, we won't give anything away), and it isn't just a deep dive into the 1998 championship run but an incredibly honest look at its leader for all those championships, Michael Jordan.

Hehir is driven to deliver a documentary that will bring some distraction to current everyday life

Hehir said the biggest challenge in finishing up the docuseries is losing the energy you get when working with everyone in the same office.

"We had five edit rooms so I can no longer walk in and out of rooms and collaborate with people," he said. "Some of the best work is done on late nights when you have an idea, order take out, and figure it out. That's something all of us have missed."

"The Last Dance" director Jason Hehir.

Kevin Winter/Getty

Hehir said the new normal now is going through a 32 terabyte dive in his apartment that has thousands of hours of footage and interacting with the production through Zoom meetings, FaceTime or text. Then the rest of the team — editors, sound mixers, color correction — all have the equipment they need at their homes and are hard at work getting the episodes ready for the air dates.

Though the work has been hard, Hehir said the payoff is being able to bring some distraction to everyone's everyday struggles due to the pandemic.

"It was a privilege to tell the story in the first place, but now to be able to bring something to the sports fans, that's a privilege and an honor, "Hehir said. "Hopefully we will bring a little bit of joy to people."

"The Last Dance" premieres on ESPN April 19.

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