Dean Norris Was Cast in ‘Law & Order’ Thanks to ‘Breaking Bad’
Breaking Bad star Dean Norris recently joined Dick Wolf’s lucrative Law & Order franchise. And it was an opportunity he received thanks to his Breaking Bad connections.
How Dean Norris ended up in ‘Law & Order Organized Crime’
Meloni would find himself returning to Law & Order after a long hiatus with Organized Crime. But the territory in the spin-off wouldn’t be too familiar for the actor. Unlike in SVU, Meloni’s Elliot Stabler found himself pursuing more orchestrated criminals in the spin-off. The spin-off would also expand on Stabler’s family in a way that hadn’t been done before.
The most recent season of Organized Crime saw Stabler reuniting with his two brothers. Dean Norris played Stabler’s older brother Randall, whereas actor Michael Trotter played the youngest Stabler brother Joseph jr. Norris was already sold on the show after hearing that Meloni would be a part of the series. But knowing Organized Crime showrunner John Shiban would be running the show further convinced him. Shiban was a writer for the hit series Breaking Bad, so Norris already had faith in the show’s quality.
“I mean, other than Chris Meloni, that’s the reason for doing the show,” Norris told Cinemablend. “John called and he said that we were going to be exploring the family relationships and stuff like that, and he certainly has come through with some great writing in that regard. And he proved his word to be true, and [there] continues to be great stuff, by the way. I’ve already seen almost to the end. I’ve only got one more script to read. So yeah, it’s been great. I felt that I could trust what was gonna happen. We were talking in some interviews about our [Stabler family] dinner scene. That’s a quintessential kind of John Shiban type thing, and it was great.”
One of the first things that Norris did after clinching the role was tease Meloni about it.
“I definitely texted Meloni and said, ‘Hey, I might be your brother. We’ll see how things work out,'” he recalled in an interview with Today. “I’m glad it did work out, and it’s been a blast.”
What did Dean Norris and Chris Meloni do before ‘Law & Order Organized Crime’?
There’s a reason why Norris was so interested in working with Meloni. The two already collaborated in a previous feature, and it seemed they developed a good rapport. The 2014 comedy saw Meloni and Norris playing two used car salesmen living different lifestyles. In a resurfaced interview with Collider, Meloni confided that he and Norris clicked immediately.
“Dean walked into the room and I immediately took a liking to the guy. We spoke a common language and had a common outlook, which I think was just that we’re two guys who enjoy working, we’re relatively intelligent, and we’re very open to playing and finding what works,” Meloni said.
Because of their history, it wasn’t hard for Norris and Meloni to channel Stabler’s family members on set. Trotter also worked alongside Meloni before on a project, which added to the chemistry the trio had. Norris joked that their opening scene on the show, which was pretending to drunk fight in a bar, came quite easy to them.
“We got drunk that morning,” he quipped. “And had a couple fights. We had good makeup, though, to cover up the bruises. I think the fact that we all had — well, I didn’t with Michael before but it certainly felt very comfortable with Mike early on — we both had that history with Chris. I think that it’s hard to fake that stuff. It kind of comes out. We were lucky.”
