‘Law & Order SVU’ Showrunner Secretly Hoped ‘Gotham’ Would Fail Because of Donal Logue
Law & Order SVU isn’t the only police procedural on network television, though it’s certainly one of the longest running. Many have come and gone over the years, including Gotham. The hit Fox series took a unique approach to the sub-genre, focusing on the Batman mythology’s corrupt Gotham City before the superhero’s debut.
But this SVU showrunner secretly hoped Gotham would fail so they could get their hands on this actor.
‘SVU’ showrunner Warren Leight regretted not signing ‘Gotham’ star Donal Logue
SVU showrunner Warren Leight became an important part of the franchise. He started out his career writing for Law & Order back in its earlier seasons. After years proving his worth, he’d eventually graduate to running SVU himself. Leight was responsible for developing SVU from seasons 13 through 17.
After his tenure, he left SVU in the hands of showrunner Rick Eid. But although he was proud of his work on the hit TV show, he wasn’t afraid to admit he had a few regrets with the series.
“I wish I had been able to…hm. Again, the audience deserved an arc out for Stabler,” Leight once told E News. “That should have been understood by everyone involved, instead I kind of walked in and he was just gone…A little out of my hands, but there’s still continued ill will about it and that’s unfortunate.”
But another big regret he had was letting actor Donal Logue slip through his fingers. Logue played Lieutenant Declan Murphy in eight episodes of SVU. Leight was on the cusp of locking Logue up for a more permanent role in SVU. But Gotham got in the way. The showrunner quipped that he hoped the Batman prequel series would fail before it officially started so he could get Logue back.
“I wish we had signed Donal Logue up,” Leight said. “We were falling in love with him and he was falling in love with the show and he got offered Gotham and we were not yet picked up at that point, so I couldn’t guarantee him a job. So, he did the pilot and we were hoping that would fail. He was great to work with.”
Donal Logue didn’t think ‘Gotham’ was too far off from ‘SVU’ and his other shows
Logue wasn’t only known for Gotham and SVU. He already had a prolific career appearing in shows like Sons of Anarchy and Vikings. In Gotham, he’d also find himself playing a police officer. He starred in the television series as jaded officer Harvey Bullock, who operated as partner to the show’s main protagonist Jim Gordon.
In an interview with Assignment X, Logue confided that he couldn’t be more excited doing the series. Especially given his newfound respect for comic books at the time.
“Comics became a deeper literary form. I don’t know how to describe this,” Logue said. “It’s interesting, because years ago, when I was at MTV, for instance, they didn’t want to do a movie about a character I created who I found very interesting, because they said, ‘It’s not as complex as talking cockroaches [which MTV was doing a musical about at the time].’ Any time you find a person, anywhere, there is complexity. So I knew, especially because of the kind of noir-ish world, that it was very complicated, and I knew that certainly Batman has become kind of a new [source of drama].”
Logue also compared Gotham to other shows he’d done, including SVU. He noted the projects actually had a few things in common.
“For me, the biggest shift with this – and I wouldn’t say much of a shift, but coming from Coppe, Vikings, Sons of Anarchy, maybe even Law & Order SVU, things that are pretty visceral and also in their time and space very real-world, it’s just that – there was a question earlier about violence, and what’s interesting to me is, we have to step back in the violence, compared to the violence of Vikings or things that I’ve been doing,” Logue said. “So to me, I thought, ‘This is theatrical, and it’s shaded with some color.’ And in a way, I’m trying to adjust to how to get to the nonviolent world in which I live in Gotham in a way.”
Donal Logue would eventually return to ‘Law & Order SVU’
Logue wouldn’t stay gone from SVU for long. Gotham enjoyed a nice five-season-run that lasted from 2014 to 2019. When the show ended, Logue’s newfound availability allowed him to temporarily reprise his role as Declan Murphy for SVU.
“My time on SVU was incredibly important to me, both as a person and an actor,” Logue told TV Insider about his return.
