Onot a week later Law and order: organized crime kicked off with a massive SVU a crossover event, Dick Wolf, showrunner Ilene Chaiken, and star Christopher Meloni are finally ready to tell a little more about NBC’s latest big deal.
For months, details on Organized crime was largely kept under fold. But during a press conference on Wednesday, the trio answered reporters’ questions about what kind of policeman Elliot Stabler will be in 2021 – and what it was like to finally reunite with his longtime partner, Mariska Hargitay, Olivia Benson.
Last summer, as Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country following the death of George Floyd, talks on police procedures began to shift. For years, data has shown that these programs can promote harmful ideas about policing by, among other things, appreciating fake policemen – and by 2020, reality has become impossible to ignore.
While showrunners began issuing statements on the issue, some viewers wondered how Elliot Stabler’s upcoming stand-alone series would handle this new dynamic, given the detective’s status as perhaps the TV’s most famous headliner. Talk about behind-the-scenes conversations between Law and order Dick Wolf told reporters on Wednesday: “We spent a lot of time talking about police behavior. I want to put it to you, probably more time than any other non-law enforcement in the country. Because that’s what we do every day. ”
Wolf referred back to a statement he made last year when he said he and his colleagues listened to the conversations at the time, adding that the crew of the program read “virtually everything” written on the subject from both sides of the political spectrum – “From far left to far right.” (The Law and order boss did not elaborate on the specific resources or groups the team would have consulted.)
“Of course we deal with what’s going on,” Wolf continues, “but it’s never in a knee-jerk way.” He describes “the paradigm episode” of Law and order as a conversation between all the regular series, in which each stands on a different side of the same question and “each of them is right – because life is not black and white, it is shades of gray.”
Finally, he said, “What I said in the spring still holds true: the programs speak for themselves.”
When Elliot Stabler re-entered the world of Law and order last week during the crossover premiere, he had questions from several colleagues about his style of policing. Many of the detective’s older colleagues, such as Olivia Benson of Hargitay and Finn Tutuola of Ice-T, agreed to new colleagues, who were more skeptical. Stabler himself, meanwhile, appeared frustrated by the constant hand-wringing, even though he acknowledged that the world of policing was changing.
But beyond the newfound questions about Stabler’s character, Organized crime will also be distinguished from the others Law and order features in his storytelling. As Wolf recently revealed, the show’s premiere season will include three bows of eight episodes, which he compared The Godfather, American gangster, and finally, Scarface.
“All you have to do is look at the cast in the first episode and realize, you know, it’s not an episodic cast,” Wolf said, referring to an episode that includes Dylan McDermott as our first big bad, the emerging mafioso Richard Wheatley. . ‘We shoot for bigger matches [with Organized Crime], “Wolf said,” and I think it’s going to be endlessly interesting, and the character … has evolved in subtle ways that are given much more than lip service. “
For the purpose, perhaps, Organized crime‘s premiere included a major tragedy. The series begins with the death of Elliot Stabler’s wife, Kathy Stabler, who is sometimes absent SVU years before Meloni’s departure. When asked what he would say to anyone who was unhappy that the program chose to kick off by using a dead woman to motivate its male central character, Wolf was straightforward: ‘You can’t please all the time . This is not what we do; the only thing we can do is tell stories. ”
‘You can not always please the people. This is not what we do; the only thing we can do is tell stories.”
Chaiken said the plot was already established when she came on board as a showrunner, but added that she thought it was “a good place to start”.
“I was pulled in immediately,” Chaiken said. When you tell a story of a beloved character who has been gone for many years, the first question you ask yourself is, ‘Why now? ‘And that, as a narrator-catalyst, is one of the best’Why now? I could think of. ”
However, the silver lining of this tragedy was obvious to many from the start: Can Benson and Stabler finally become an item? (Once, of course, they heal all the pain Stabler caused when he left power without saying goodbye.) The answer to the question remains to be seen – but Meloni confirmed that he and Hargitay were covered by the answers from fans on their on- air reunion.
“I think she did it more than I expected,” Meloni said of his longtime partner. ‘Because I think … she was in the Law and order stew … I was not prepared. ”
“It’s overwhelming, and it’s amazing, and it’s much appreciated,” Meloni continued. ‘And I think this time I do not know that the pressure is off. I feel less pressured than when Dick first commissioned me to be Elliot Stabler. So I’m a little freer to appreciate everything. It’s a nice trip. ”