12 ‘Law & Order’ Stars Who Played Multiple Characters in the Franchise
With all the out-of-work actors in New York City, you’d think it’d be easier for the Law & Order franchise not to cast the same actors in multiple parts. (Or maybe the L&O world just has a higher preponderance of twins? Or some sort of government cloning program?)
Whatever the reason, many Law & Order stars have pulled double, triple, quadruple, even quintuple duty on the original NBC series and its spinoffs, as you’ll see below. Peter Scanavino, for example, has played five characters on shows across the franchise, while Camryn Manheim has played four characters on just the original-flavor Law & Order.
“My first job out of NYU was on Law & Order back in 1991, 30 years ago,” Manheim told reporters at a panel last February (per Showbiz Cheat Sheet). “It’s hard to believe. I came back as three different characters on Law & Order through the years. It was a badge of honor to be able to be in an off-Broadway play or a Broadway play and say that you’d been on Law & Order and then how many times you’d been on Law & Order. And I still have the programs that [say]: ‘I want to thank my mom,’ dah, dah, dah, ‘Law & Order three times.’”
Here are details on their characters and the other Law & Order doppelgängers we’ve seen on both sides of the prison bars.
Anthony Anderson
Less than two years before joining Law & Order as Det. Kevin Bernard, Anderson played Law & Order: SVU’s Detective Lucius Blaine, a substitute partner for Stabler (Christopher Meloni), in the 2006 SVU episode “Fat.”
Raúl Esparza
You know him as former A.D.A. Rafael Barba from SVU, but Esparza also played A.D.A. turned murderer Kevin Mulrooney in the 2009 Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode “Lady’s Man” and accused extortionist Dennis Di Palma in the 2010 Law & Order episode “Blackmail.”
Kelli Giddish
Giddish, who’ll check out of her longtime gig as Amanda Rollins on SVU this season, previously guest-starred on the same show as rape victim Kara Bawson in the 2007 episode “Outsider.” Later that year, she played murder suspect Dana Stipe in the Criminal Intent episode “Depths.”
Ice-T
Ice-T has played Sergeant Fin Tutuola in nearly 500 SVU episodes now, but a couple of years before that role came along, he portrayed murder suspect Seymour “Kingston” Stockton in the 1998 TV movie Exiled: A Law & Order Movie.
Camryn Manheim
Manheim guest-starred on Law & Order three times decades before becoming a series regular as Lieutenant Kate Dixon. The actress played Leila in the 1991 episode “Life Choice,” Martha Rollins in 1993’s “Benevolence,” and Beatrice Hines in the following year’s “Nurture.”
S. Epatha Merkerson
Merkerson, Manheim’s predecessor on the show, also played multiple roles on Law & Order. In the 1991 Season 1 episode “Mushrooms,” she portrayed Denise Winters, the mother of a shooting victim. Then, in 1993, she started her long-term role of Lieutenant Anita Van Buren in the Season 4 premiere.
Diane Neal
Neal played A.D.A. Casey Novak on SVU between 2003 and 2012 — after guest-starring on the same show as convicted murderer Amelia Chase in the 2001 episode “Ridicule.”
Jerry Orbach
Only a year before he joined Law & Order as Det. Lennie Briscoe, the late Orbach played defense attorney Frank Lehrman in the 1991 Season 2 episode “The Wages of Love.”
Annie Parisse
Between 2005 and 2006, Parisse played the ill-fated A.D.A. Alexandra Borgia on Law & Order. But in 2002, she guest-starred on the same show as exotic dancer Jasmine Blake in the episode “Attorney Client.”
Peter Scanavino
SVU fans know Scanavino as detective-turned-A.D.A. Dominick Carisi Jr., but he previously played Johnny Dubcek in the same show’s 2013 episode “Monster’s Legacy.” And a before that, he guest-starred as Robert Hassel in Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005), Johnny Feist in Criminal Intent (2005), and Jim Anderson in the original Law & Order (2009).
Annabella Sciorra
In 2006, Sciorra briefly starred as Det. Carolyn Barek in Criminal Intent, a character she played again on SVU last year. In 2005, however, she played defense attorney Maggie Dettweiler in the Trial by Jury episode “The Abominable Showman.”
Jeremy Sisto
When Sisto joined the Law & Order cast as Det. Cyrus Lupo in 2008, some viewers had to have remembered that he played defense attorney Clint Glover on the show less than a year prior.
