LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT: Peter Scanavino Reflects on Carisi’s Season 22 Courtroom Arc

As LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT season 22 worked in events from the real world, as well as the return of an original character, the long-running drama also had a pod of episodes focusing primarily on the courtroom element of their storytelling–and focusing on Carisi (Peter Scanavino).

The trio of episodes (“Sightless in a Savage Land,” “Turn Me On Take Me Private,” and “The Long Arm of the Witness”) challenged Carisi, a detective-turned-ADA, in unexpected ways: by going head-to-head with a longtime friend; contending with a messy case where a stalker crosses a line with a cam girl; and investigating a powerful judge.

“I think it was really necessary,” Scanavino admits. “For Carisi as a character, you needed a moment where you see him go, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’m confident in what I’m doing, and I’m good at this.’ That doesn’t mean he’s got to be, at this point, the most skilled ADA that’s ever existed in the district attorney’s office. But you can see the glimmer of it. That, ‘Oh, this is why I do this. This is what I’m doing. And here’s how I’m going to be.'”

“So I think you really needed that; Carisi needed that, personally, but I think the show also needed that to solidify his position, as opposed to somebody that’s been scrambling, up to that point, for the most part, trying to find his footing,” he continues. “Getting in trouble with his bosses, thinking he’s failing, thinking he doesn’t have what it takes. And then with that three-episode arc, I think it was really solidifying his position: I’m here, I should be here, and I’m good at what I do. And I think that was very, very important.”

Filming the episodes was also a unique experience. “There was so much courtroom,” he says with a laugh. “It just felt like we were doing a courtroom movie for a month, because every scene was in a courtroom all day. But then it was amazing because it was with Elizabeth Marvel [in ‘Long Arm’] and with Raúl [Esparza in ‘Sightless’], and I got to just be in a courtroom and act with all these wonderful actors. So it was a really great time.”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, Season Premiere, Thursday, September 23, 8/7c, NBC

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