Sam Waterston Recruits Real-Life Daughter for ‘Law & Order’ 400th Episode
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“I’m completely amazed, astounded, and very lucky,” says Sam Waterston as he marks his ground-breaking 400th Law & Order episode playing New York prosecutor Jack McCoy (first as Executive Assistant District Attorney, then as DA) on “Open Wounds,” the May 18-airing Season 22 finale. Waterston played McCoy on the show from 1994 through 2010 and after an 11-year hiatus, returned on the reboot in February 2022.
The anniversary experience was made even more special when his real-life daughter Elisabeth Waterston was cast as D.A. McCoy’s daughter Rebecca, a defense attorney. “That topped everything,” the 82-year-old actor says, as he talks about the politically and personally fraught episode. “She’s a beautiful actress, quick to react, full of intelligence and ready emotion. I have three actor children and there isn’t anything more fun than acting with them.” (His younger daughter Katherine Waterston, was most recently seen as Matthew Rhys’ love interest in the second season of Perry Mason.)
Peter Kramer/NBC
Will there be more episodes for Waterston to celebrate? At press time, no deal to return has yet been signed but we’re keeping our fingers crossed!
Rebecca appears as McCoy’s legal adversary on a tough murder case. [She represents a teacher accused of the fatal shooting of a U.S. Senator at the politician’s daughter’s wedding in revenge for his vote on a gun control bill.] How does that play out?
Sam Waterston: The defendant argues [the teacher] has been so hurt by all this violence — [he lost students in a school shooting] — that his reaction should be excused. Rebecca buys that argument; McCoy doesn’t. He wants a life sentence, the maximum sentence in New York.
How does Rebecca as a defense attorney argue that the defendant doesn’t deserve that penalty?
She makes a great defense; after all, she’s a McCoy. But as Jack McCoy says, ‘We can’t become a place where we settle these fights at the point of a gun.’
McCoy surprisingly reveals his personal politics at a press conference as he vows to pursue the maximum penalty of life. Why?
He speaks from the frustration that the vast majority of us feel as gun violence mounts and our institutions don’t act to protect us.
What’s the relationship between Jack and his only child, whom we have only seen once on the show back in 2007 [then played by Jamie Schofield]?
There’s nothing simple about their relationship and there’s a lot [between them] that hasn’t been resolved. The situation now ain’t easy. The wounds at the beginning are open at the end.
Law & Order, Season 22 Finale, Thursday, May 18, 8/7c, NBC
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