If you haven’t heard already, when NBC’s fall season begins, there will only be two “Law & Order” series still on the network: the original and “L&O: Special Victims Unit.” But don’t cry for “L&O: Criminal Intent” just yet: the show will continue with new episodes on the USA Network, which is also part of the NBC-Universal family.
“L&O” creator Dick Wolf showed up with a statement in hand to clarify how the network would handle it if Senator Fred Thompson ended up making a run for the White House (long story short: don’t count on seeing D.A. Arthur Branch show up on any episodes during the campaign…and that goes for re-runs, too), but the majority of his time was spent answering questions about whether or not the original “Law & Order” would beat “Gunsmoke” for the longest-running drama in television history.
“I sure hope so,” admits Wolf. “I think that the show is going through one of its major renovations of the past 10 years. Jeremy (Sisto) is joining the cast. I think it was this year’s cast, in a sense, (but) I’m pleased to announce that Linus Roache will also be joining as the new prosecutor. So the show has a very different look than it had two years ago. I think that Sam (Waterston) is going to be a terrific DA, but if you look at a cast that, as I said, two seasons ago had Sam as the chief prosecutor, Fred as the DA, and Dennis Farina as essentially the lead cop and you look at the way it’s going to look this year, that is a very, very large shift and also a very deliberate shift to hopefully reignite or further penetrate a younger demo. The show has been skewing older, and we would love it to skew a little bit younger.”
Sisto and Roache, together again? Two “Kidnapped” alumni on “Law & Order”…? “I thought ‘Kidnapped’ was an incredibly well produced show,” says Wolf. “Shows that may not have necessarily worked are very rarely the fault of the actors.” There’s not much that can be said about Roache’s character – he was only signed right before Wolf made the announcement, apparently – but Sisto at least acknowledged that his “L&O” character is completely different from his role on “Kidnapped.”
Alicia Witt is joining the cast of “L&O: Criminal Intent” for six episodes. “I’m playing this detective who is — she’s in the
major-case squad, of course, and her name is Nola Falucci. And she’s kind of a work-in-progress. I’ve only really known about this for, like, a week or so,” says Witt, “so I’m just really excited to discover who she is. I know that she’s going to be someone who’s not necessarily the most tactful girl in the world, and it’s kind of how she’s risen in the ranks so fast at such a young-ish age. So she is going to be Chris Noth’s partner and kind of no-nonsense, just wants to figure out who did it and get the person off the streets and move on to the next case. She very much wants to get to the bottom of everything. And the cool thing about her is that she’s actually married with two young children, so the way I see it is that…I haven’t seen a script or anything yet. We’re just still working on all of that right now. But I see her as somebody who loves her job, loves the intellectualism of it, wants to do the best possible work she can so that she can get home to her kids and shed all of that and just be — just be mom.”
Well, that just leaves “SVU,” so let’s take of that: Adam Beach (“Flags of our Fathers”) will be joining the cast of that show, playing a character named Chester Lake. “He’s from one of the Mohawk reservations that borders Canada and New York,” explains Beach, “and his past history is that he was involved as a child within the Special Victims Unit. Something happened to him as a kid, and he had a — he was thrown in and out of foster care homes. And where they are leading onto developing the history of the Mohawks in New York, they talk subtly about it. Where it goes from here, I don’t know yet, but they wanted to incorporate, definitely, that part of history.”
There’s no confirmation as to whether Witt might stay on beyond her six episodes, or if Jesse Martin will last for longer than the 13 episodes for which he’s currently signed, but one thing’s for certain: Wolf has absolutely no idea if Chris Noth has signed on for the “Sex & the City” movie.
