Law and Order Le remplaçant de Jesse L Martin

Law and Order : Le remplaçant de Jesse L Martin



L'acteur Anthony Anderson (K ville ) obtient son badge sur Law and Order


Over the course of its 18 seasons, Law & Order
has gone through more than a dozen cast changes, but it's almost never
had a new character interact with the person he or she is replacing.

That will change Wednesday, when Anthony Anderson joins
the NBC drama as Detective Kevin Bernard. Starting next week, Bernard
will replace Ed Green (the departing Jesse L. Martin) on the NYPD
homicide unit, but this week he's an Internal Affairs detective trying
to get to the bottom of a case in which Green gets himself bound up.

L&O executive producer Dick Wolf says while the character overlap ended up working out, it wasn't really planned.

"It was really kismet. I don't think that there was a plan that we
were going to do the overlap," Wolf says. "... So when we knew [Martin]
was going to leave, then we decided, 'Well, let's do it this season,
because there would be an opportunity to do something that we hadn't
done before.

"[Executive producer] Rene [Balcer] came up with, I think, just a
fantastic story for this episode and it's very compelling. And it
seemed like a natural thing to do."

Anderson, meanwhile, is making his own cop show-to-cop show transition, coming off of FOX's New Orleans-set K Ville. But he sees more in common between K-Ville's rule-bending Marlin Boulet and Bernard, who comes off as pretty straitlaced at first.

"You may think he's a by-the-book guy because he comes from Internal
Affairs, but he knows how to get around certain things without cutting
too many corners to get the job done," Anderson says. "The difference
in the characters from K-Ville to Law & Order,
they're both passionate about their job, and wear their hearts on their
sleeves, and will do what it takes to get the job done. That's what I
think connects these two, if you want to connect them at all."

More highlights from a conversation with Anderson and Wolf:

Anderson on moving between comedy and drama:
"Comedy is something that just comes second nature to me, and it was
what hit for me first. And I just rode that wave. And before I rode
that wave any further than I was going to, I wanted to, you know, just
take a step back before I was typecast as just being the funny guy. ...

"Once they see you do something and you do it well, they may think that's all that you can do. So shows like Law & Order, shows like The Shield, movies like The Departed and Hustle & Flow,
those were shows and movies that I sat back and targeted, and had my
team go after because those are the things that I wanted to do to show
the converse of what people were used to seeing me as."

On joining a plot-driven show: "No reservations at
all. You know, this show is going to go down in history and I don't
know about you, but I know in my life, in my circle of friends, we all
want to make and be a part of history.

"So when I got the call from Dick Wolf to come on board on this, I
jumped at the opportunity just because of the history that this show
has made and the history that this show will continue to make. And to
join a long list of some of the most talented people who have worked
and are working in our industry. So to be mentioned in the same breath
as, you know, the longest-running show in television history -- which
I'm very confident that this show will become -- is definitely a
feather in my cap." (Gunsmoke still holds the record for TV-drama longevity, at 20 seasons.)

Wolf on doling out character details: "What
you need are actors who bring their own back story with them, that you
don't have to go into detail because they are fascinating enough by
what they bring to the table.

"And I can't emphasize that enough. ... Nobody ever felt frustrated
by lack of knowledge about who Jerry Orbach was on the show. And I
don't think anybody has ever felt frustrated by lack of knowledge who
Sam [Waterston] is. I mean, the way I've put it over the years is that
we do not dole out information with soup ladles. We do it with
eyedroppers. But if you're a regular viewer of the show, you do know an
enormous amount of substantive information about the characters. But
you've got to pay attention."

Wolf on choosing Anderson to replace Martin: "It
was actually the SVU episode [in a 2006 episode of the Law & Order
sibling, Anderson played Detective Lucius Blaine, who was temporarily
assigned to partner with Chris Meloni's Elliot Stabler]. ... There was
a scene that Chris had been making Anthony's character totally nuts
during the whole episode. And he was over by the coffee stand and Chris
came up to bug him about something else, and Anthony turned on him and
went, 'What.' And it was such a pure, human moment and a non-acting
moment.

"But it was just one of those wonderful things that convinced you
this guy can really act in a way that you can't teach. I mean, there
was comic timing involved in that. There were all sorts of -- I would
hate to say technical expertise involved, but it was just one of those
moments that you -- he's the guy you want on your show."