Why Chris Meloni Was Willing to Return to ‘Law & Order: Organized Crime’ But Not ‘SVU’
Law & Order welcomed Chris Meloni back with open arms, recruiting the actor for the cast of its new spin-off series Organized Crime. And although Meloni was excited about returning to the new show, doing SVU on a permanent basis wasn’t on the table.
Chris Meloni had no intention of going back to ‘Law & Order SVU’
Meloni was intrigued by exploring a different corner of the Law & Order universe. The actor returned for the franchise for Organized Crime, which presented a new set of crimes for Elliott Stabler to solve. This new show focused on crimes with deep mob ties, and broke away from the procedural format that Law & Order was familiar with.
“It’s not a case of the week, because organized crime doesn’t work in that way,” producer Ilene Chaiken told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s an episodic show; the episodes will stand on their own. But the stories will also play out over the course of a whole season.”
The show’s creator Dick Wolf was also on board with bringing Meloni back. Meloni was surprised Wolf reached out to him after his unceremonious departure from the show. Back then, an agreement couldn’t be reached between Meloni and the series’ producers regarding the actor’s requests. But he also left because he was interested in exploring newer forms of storytelling.
“I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do, keep moving forward,’ ” Meloni once told The New York Post. “I had done the Law & Order way of storytelling, which they do really well, and I was interested in telling stories from a different angle — whether comedic or inhabiting a new world or doing it on different platforms.”
A decade later, Meloni was more open to returning to a Law & Order that perhaps provided the storytelling he was looking for. At the same time, however, Meloni would’ve rejected an offer to return to SVU permanently.
“That, I didn’t want to do,” Meloni said. “That felt like going back to what was. That boat had sailed.”
How Chris Meloni felt about reuniting with Mariska Hargitay for a special ‘Law & Order SVU’ episode
Although Meloni wouldn’t return to SVU permanently, he didn’t mind a guest role here and there. With him back in the fold, it seemed it would only be a matter of time before he crossed paths with his old SVU team. The opportunity presented itself in a special crossover episode between SVU and Organized Crime. Meloni’s Elliot Stabler and Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson would pair up like old times for the sake of an overlapping case.
“We’ve reintroduced two characters that their ‘their-ness’ ended abruptly, very unsatisfactorily, and now they are just as suddenly reunited,” Meloni once told People about the episode.
He also asserted that, because of the suddenness of his character’s departure, the team of Stabler and Benson would’ve taken some getting used to.
“I think they have a lot of understanding and a lot of healing to go through before things get back to a state of normalcy or understanding, where they are in their lives and how each other, truly, deeply fit in with each other,” he said.
The actors, however, didn’t have as difficult of a time getting back into the groove of things. Hargitay asserted that she and Meloni managed to pick up right where they left off without missing a step.
“There was so much shorthand between us, which all goes back to the trust we have,” she said. “He’s always made me feel like I could just jump off the ledge, the cliff, the bridge, and he would catch me, in so many ways, whether it was comedy or acting or friendship.”
