As any good “Law and order” fan knows full well, the show tends to use the same actors multiple times to portray different characters in different episodes. So, for example, the actor playing a black man who has successfully “passed” as a white man for years in one episode will show up in another episode playing a police detective from New Jersey.
Does anybody know why they do this so often? Are there so few actors in NYC that they need to do this? Do they do it on purpose just to make the show more interesting to fans? I personally find it very distracting, but maybe I’m the only one.
Just once, though, I’d love to see one of the regulars meet a recycled actor for the first time in an episode and say, “Hey – haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Can you imagine McCoy saying to opposing counsel, “Excuse me, but didn’t I send you to jail three years ago for murdering your family?”
They probably do it because they liked the actor’s work and felt he had the right look for the role. It’s no big deal; the producers assume that most of the audience isn’t going to care.
Last night (Tuesday) had Zeljko Ivanek playing a slimy venture capitalist who acted as his own counsel in the first hour, then in the 2-parter that followed, he had the role of an ADA who was up for nomination as a judge. I kept saying, “You fool, McCoy! Don’t you see he’s the one Ben Stone put away for killing 2 people?”
Well, it’s not that unusual. Jack Webb used the same pool of actors for a bunch of roles in both “Dragnet” series and “Emergency!” and to a lesser extent in “Adam-12.”
Yes, that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about. I just find it distracting is all.
On a slightly related note, it seems like whenever they use a “famous” actor as a guest star (Julia Roberts, Gary Busey, etc.) that character always turns out being the bad guy. As soon as they show the famous guest star, you right away know who did it and that pretty much makes the whole first half of the show wasted for me.
You’re not the first to notice the use of the same actors/actresses, gt. Here’s the “repeat offenders” list
http://members.tripod.com/~MindHarp/lorepeat.html
There are very good followers of L&0 who have commented on this board. They should be by soon. It is from them I have learned that once you get a roll on the series there is a time limit before you’re allowed to show up again. This time limit may work on the weekly network episodes, but with cable channels showing the things out of order every night you’re bound to bump into these people more often.
From memory of past posts: Casting Director Suzanne Ryan is under pressure to fill the parts each week. The pool is from the New York members of Actors Equity (the result being that you’ll see a number of repeat offenders on The Sopranos which is also shot in that area).
Oh – I know I’m not the first, and I think I even remember seeing that site at one point. I was just wondering why they do this and whether it bugs anybody else.
My wife and I saw one episode the other night where a daughter paid her boyfriend to kill her mother. Of course, you didn’t know that the daughter was behind it until the very end. Unfortunately, they used the same actress who played a girl who was kidnapped and then helped her kidnapper go on a robbery and killing spree, and as soon as I recognized her I knew that she was going to be the guilty party.
OZ also used a whole bunch of Law & Order actors (some lead, others not), which made for some great ironic casting. Chris Meloni, who on OZ played the sexiest sociopath I’ve ever seen, plays Detective Elliot Stabler, family man. My favorite doubling was J.K. Simmons, who played Aryan leader Vern Schillinger on OZ and mustachioed psychiatrist Dr, Emil Skoda on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Look up any cast member of OZ on imdb and there’ll usually be at least one Law & Order credit and possibly one for Homicide.
See Homicide for more Law & Order and OZ actor recycling, thanks to Tom Fontana, creator of OZ and executive producer of Homicide.
Actually, the kidnap victim-turned-accomplice was played by Amanda Peet (episode title: “Hot Pursuit”) and the vengeful daughter was played by Ellen Pompeo (“Savior”).
And while it’s true that S. Epatha Merkerson had a guest shot before being recast as Lt. Van Buren, Jerry Orbach also had a guest shot as a defense attorney before being cast as Det. Briscoe. Since Steven Hill’s departure, Orbach is now the longest-running cast member.
Among other interesting casting notes, five past and present members of The Practice have appeared on Law & Order, only one of them (Camryn Manheim) appearing as a lawyer. The rest of the time, they were playing criminals or suspected criminals.
There is also large cross-pollination between the various Law & Order shows and Oz, with at least three cold-blooded killers being cast as cops and one white supremacist cast as a consulting psychiatrist (“He suffers from bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by somebody burning a swastika into his ass!”)
Really? I’ll take your word for it, although it sure looked like the same actress to me. Ah well – you know what they say: The first two things to go when you get older are memory and some other thing.
As an afterthought, my favourite idea for the final episode of L&O: Criminal Intent involves R. Lee Ermey as a suspect. At the climactic interrogation scene, Vincent D’Onofrio tries a psychological trick to break Ermey, suggesting Ermey’s parents didn’t show him enough affection. At that point, Ermey snaps, grabs a weapon, shoots D’Onofrio and then himself.
Oh, wait. I’m totally crazy here. Thanks to your link to IMDB, I see that Ellen Pompeo is the actress I was thinking about and she did star in two different episodes: “Savior” (where she played the daughter who paid her boyfriend to kill her mother) and “Fools for Love” (where she played a woman who helped her boyfriend rape and kill her own sister).
I knew I had seen her before and that she played the villain. I just got my episodes confused…
Almost all long-running dramatic and even some comedy shows do this to some extent. Dennis Franz was on Hill Street Blues before becoming a character and so was Harry Morgan on MAS*H. Barney Miller used a pool of character actors to portray all its nutty arrestees.
Good actors who can walk into a long-running show and “get it” right away are hard to find, so directors like using the ones they absolutely know for sure are reliable.
First as the schizophrenic lawyer who defends himself, then as an anti-government fanatic…who defends himself, and finaly as a priest who pleads guilty to murder so that a family friend would get off.
2001: A Space Odyssey star Kier Dullea recently doubled on L&O… firstas co-council for a self-defending serial killer, and next as a judge whose daughter ends up murdered.
The various Star Trek shows (post original series) went for recycling as well, though their motivation is a bit stronger. When an actor needs elaborate make-up to appear as an alien, it’s common practice to make a plaster cast of the actor’s head so the rubber prostheses can be custom-fitted. Making this cast is time-consuming, so when the casting director is figuring out who will play the Frenkalian Ambassador in an episode that starts filming next month, it’s easier to:
[ul][li]Call the actor’s agent and book him for next month.[/li][li]Call the makeup department and tell them to drag out the actor’s head cast and start making appropriate rubber prostheses.[/li][li]When the actor shows up a day before shooting begins, have make-up do the final adjustments (since they’ve already worked up the basic shape from a copy of the actor’s head, this is much easier and cheaper than paying the actor to sit through several days of make-up tests)[/li][li]Shoot the actor’s scenes[/li][li]Wave good-bye until next time.[/li][/ul]
“Who is the only Star Trek actor to play character of three different races?” was a standard trivia question for years, but Mark Lenard has since been beaten by Marc Alaimo and Jeffrey Combs, among others.
I even have a cast of my own head, used when I made an Star Trek: DS9-inspired latex mask. I won the latex mask category at “Toronto Trek” one year. I wore a tuxedo and waved a baton to a section of Beethoven’s Ninth.
I was wondering if anyone else was going to bring this up. I remember one episode in particular that had the guy (don’t remember his name) who played the head CO in OZ as the father of a kid who killed another kid. Seeing Schillinger psychoanalyze him was priceless.
Almost all American television comedies and dramas shoot in the Los Angeles area, and that’s where the actors and aspiring actors of the world flock to. There are several shows that shoot in New York City, but it’s a distant second to LA when it comes to the television industry. New York does still have a lot of actors, but most are stage actors (by both preference and training). A good number of these actors are either unwilling or unsuited to do television work.
Since each episode of Law & Order requires a large cast of characters and the show has been running for ages, it would be difficult for them to avoid doubling up. Well, I guess they could start casting amateurs and people of questionable talent. The latter route has been taken by small-budget shows that shoot outside LA, but while that may have added to the campy feel of Xena: Warrior Princess (where you’d see the same New Zealand non-actors in minor roles epsiode after episode) it would probably hurt a serious drama like Law & Order.
