Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (19 page)

Read Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion Online

Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

2:45 P.M.
Leto is on the squad room floor with the monitors, while the actors sit around a table with containers of Chinese take-out up in the lounge. Hargitay: “This is real food, right?” Leto: “Yeah, but don’t eat it.” A prop man mentions later that they spent $80 on the meal, in case more than what’s initially laid out is needed.
2:50 P.M.
Hargitay calls down: “Stephanie, what time is it?” Marquardt: “9:30.” It’s not yet 3 P.M., of course, but they’re talking script hours. The room is darkened, so night seems realistic.
3 P.M.
While Hargitay waits for shooting to begin, she chats with fellow actors, explaining that it took her a year of marriage to stop calling her husband Peter Hermann “Chris,” and Meloni counters by saying how difficult it was to stop calling his wife “Peter.” Always a naughty clown, he adds: “Just said I was referring to my penis.”
5:25 P.M.
Leto joins Mike Sime, the show’s video assistant, in an area of the soundstage where the crew has begun creating Marga’s zero-gravity sequence. In the episode, this is going to be watched by schoolchildren. The strong wires they’ve hooked to each side of her blue space suit will later be digitally erased from the frames. Suspended in midair against the backdrop of a shuttle interior, she is coached on how to move her arms and legs as if floating.
Although fascinated, Leto quips, “OK, I’m going back to where the action is.”
5:50 P.M.
Back at the lounge, where the action is, everyone’s besieged by the intensifying heat and humidity. Hargitay wipes perspiration from her brow. “I’d rather act when it’s cold than when it’s hot,” she vows at the start of a scene with Meloni and Brolin.
On the day Hargitay’s been nominated for an Emmy at 8:30 A.M., she’s still sweating under the lights at 6 P.M.
6:15 P.M.
The space station video shoot gets under way. Truly takes photos of the suspension process.
6:30 P.M.
In the production office, prop man Anthony Munafo shares a taste of the novelty freeze-dried space “ice cream” that he purchased for Anton to eat in the episode. There are twenty-five bags of the stuff, just in case. It tastes a bit like sweet cardboard.
7:02 P.M.
In the holding room, the fake cops are still playing cards.
Trailed by August, Hargitay walks briskly along a hallway while telling her enthusiastic son: “Let’s go see everybody! Let’s go see everybody!”
7:10 P.M.
Hargitay shows August around “where Mommy works.” He goes up to the lounge with her. The boy is perched on a seat in front of the gigantic camera and allowed to hold the guiding arms of the apparatus. A little later, she brings him down to Benson’s desk.
August likes to be called “Augustino” but, when someone calls him “Auggie,” Hargitay chides them: “Don’t corrupt my child.” Mother and son sit at her desk, singing the alphabet song. She also trills “You Are My Sunshine” to him and explains the meanings of “astronauts” and “cut” and “action!” He then goes around chanting, “Cut! Cut!”
7:50 P.M.
With the camera behind her, Hargitay’s in the lounge leaning over the staircase to talk with Ice-T standing on the steps. This brief scene requires numerous takes. Leto has referred to it as “The famous derriere shot.” He says to Pattison: “We’re looking at her tush for ten seconds.” Hargitay, “This is so hot.” It’s not clear if she means the saucy shot of her rear end or the temperature.
FRIDAY, JULY 18
9:30 A.M.
It’s a cops-and-perps day on the New Jersey set. Background extras are slated to be the main focus of a complex, chaotic scene in the halls outside the squad room.
11:10 A.M.
The big scene is being blocked, but a Hannah Montana concert in Bryant Park has reportedly delayed actress Betty Buckley’s arrival. When she does appear, Leto explains how he’d like her to walk from the interrogation room into the hallway. Her client will be getting shot, so she’ll have to back away through an oncoming sea of armed SVU detectives.
Leto is wearing a red T-shirt with an image of two blazing pistols, from which long strands of smoke entwine to form a heart. He’s also singing “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” a 1968 Beatles tune.
Three takes are sufficient, but Leto tells DeHaan: “Because I’m a paranoid freak, one more time exit left.”
11:25 A.M.
The hallway is “broomed”—all of the furniture is removed to make way for the next scenes.
Buckley wonders who sent the beautiful flowers to her dressing room. The answer: Hargitay. The recipient later marvels that, “Mariska’s just the perfect woman.”
11:30 A.M.
The key actors, standing in a circle, are doing a read-through of their lines. First assistant director Howard McMaster handles the part that will eventually be recited by Jeffrey Scaperrotta, the young recurring cast member playing Dickie Stabler, who tells Benson that he prefers to be called Dick now. There’s much guffawing over the notion of a grown man reading the “aw shucks” dialogue of a teenager.
11:35 A.M.
Leto gives an extensive walking tour through the series of shots that will take up most of the day. He winds up on the floor to illustrate where the shooting victim should fall. Brolin asks: “Want to go over that again?” McMaster cautions: “Don’t encourage him.”
11:50 A.M.
Truly says his father read the script and, though also an astronaut named Dick, he was fine with the fictitious astronaut Dick being a killer. Did the real guy ever have a stalker like the “Lunacy” character Anton? Not exactly, Truly recalls, but there was some woman who caused trouble for a while.
12:05 P.M.
Someone from the wardrobe department holds up three identical gray shirts like the one Vince wears in the scene. The team needs to figure out precisely where he gets shot.
12:20 P.M.
Meloni talks to Truly about Stabler’s impending fight scene with Dick Finley and reveals an actual bruise on his arm from a recent tussle. “I’m getting too old for this,” the actor suggests.
12:30 P.M.
Jeffrey Scaperrotta is on hand and ready to perform in his role as Dickie. Leto inspects photos of Marga, while she’s still alive, and selects the “most professional” one.
12:50 P.M.
Meloni pulls Hargitay into the squad room, saying: “I have another saga to tell you about.” “People will talk,” she quips. They chat quietly.
1:40 P.M.
Leto, working on reaction shots of Chris Elliott as Anton, tends to become giddy when things go well.
2:15 P.M.
Things are not going so well now. Brolin is having some trouble remembering his lines. Perhaps he’s not accustomed to much episodic TV.
2:35 P.M.
While “Lunacy” continues shooting in New Jersey, auditions are under way at Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers for an episode to kick off season ten that David Platt will direct, “Trials.” He’s in a room with EP Ted Kotcheff, first assistant director David DeClerque, casting director Jonathan Strauss, and a few others.
They’re seeing boys between the ages of seven and twelve for the challenging role of a foster child with hyperactive behavior. The first child to try out for the part is a diminutive kid with round wire-rim glasses that give him a Harry Potter look. With a clear voice and convincing delivery, he even has all the lines in one scene memorized.
“He’s adorable,” Strauss says when the wizard-like lad leaves the room. “But maybe not red-faced enough.”
The character is required to throw tantrums. That would seem to be perfect for Boy Number Five, a prepubescent with a rather menacing demeanor.
“That kid’s going to grow up and be a car thief,” Platt later suggests.
“An eight-year-old method actor?” muses DeClerque.
Strauss has arranged for Kotcheff to see some other boys in Los Angeles on Monday, so no decision will be made until then.
3:30 P.M.
Pressed for time, Leto doesn’t want to wait ten minutes while the crew removes a light fixture in the hallway so that the boom mike can be better accommodated. The fixture comes down anyway.
The inner wrist of Belzer’s left arm bears a tattoo that reads, “Don’t panic.” It was inspired by the identical catchphrase in
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
, Douglas Adams’s 1979 sci-fi novel.
3:40 P.M.
Belzer notices that the squad room floor has been replaced during the recent hiatus. Someone makes a comment about how
SVU
can afford new floors but not staff raises.
3:50 P.M.
For the sequence that requires gunshots, Leto yells “Bang!” on cue. Buckley’s Collette Walsh is pushed aside by the SVU cops so they can apprehend the shooter. People are referring to it as “the Betty Buckley Abuse Scene.”
6:30 P.M.
A thick padded mat has been put down to cushion the fall when Finley tackles Anton Thibodeaux.
Welcome back sign for cast and crew, season ten
8:30 P.M.
A yellow cake with chocolate icing is brought out to celebrate James Brolin’s birthday.
9:30 P.M.
Make-believe corpses in body bags are wheeled out on gurneys. Leto experiences some frustration in trying again and again to get the shot right.
9:40 P.M.
Pizza is on the way and, presumably, a kiss of the hops: The production assistants regularly bet in a card game that funnels some of their winnings to the purchase of beer on Friday nights.
9:50 P.M.
“Three more shots and we’re out of here,” Leto promises. “Maybe four?”
10 P.M.
Maybe more than four. Irritated, Leto throws down his earphones and transmitter in disgust. “I’m good for one of those an episode,” he says by way of explanation.
10:25 P.M.
Pizza arrives. One of the makeup people mentions that Ice-T is the “Zen master” of the show. Apparently, he’s never in a bad mood and always has some bit of wisdom to share. “Every day I’m not in prison is a good day,” Ice-T has reportedly told his colleagues.
MONDAY, JULY 21
11 A.M.
At the southern tip of Manhattan, just a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center once stood, the Battery Park waterfront is a familiar setting from all the Law & Order shows. On this morning, curious locals and tourists watch the
SVU
production in progress, often snapping photos.
It’s excruciatingly hot, despite a breeze off the Hudson River. In addition to iced Poland Spring water, there’s a large tub with various brands of sunscreen. Tamara Tunie is trying to stay cool under a white umbrella. Meloni’s dressed in what would be a normal men’s business shirt—except the sleeves have been cut off. This adjustment won’t show up on camera once he dons a dark suit jacket when shooting begins. Hargitay acknowledges that she’s “roasting” in black pants, a top and a vest, over which her jacket will go when necessary.
Background extras in police uniforms are everywhere. Kristin Krebe, playing Marga, is doing her swan song as the dead body is fished out of the Hudson. The scene in which she’s discovered floating in the water was shot earlier. We’re told that a motorized raft had circled nearby and stuntmen were submerged in the river to make sure the actress was safe.
Now that raft has been relabeled with “NYC NYPD” and has a single stunt man inside. They bob in the background as filming continues. “That’s a two-fer,” says producer Gail Barringer, referring to a prop that does double duty.

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