LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME's Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Previews Isabella's Reaction to Her Family Being Endangered: 'The Gloves Are Off' - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

Give Me My Remote > Law & Order: Organized Crime > LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME’s Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Previews Isabella’s Reaction to Her Family Being Endangered: ‘The Gloves Are Off’

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME’s Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Previews Isabella’s Reaction to Her Family Being Endangered: ‘The Gloves Are Off’

May 7, 2025 by  

Law and Order Organized Crime Isabella

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME –“PROMESSE INFRANTE” Episode 504 — Pictured: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantoio as Isabella Spezzano — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/PEACOCK)

When Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was first approached about portraying Isabella Spezzano—a former Italian CI for Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), whose family gets entangled in his present-day case—on LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME season 5, she was on a family trip, anticipating some time away from work.

“I was in Italy, as you are, on a Friday night,” Mastrantonio tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “I’d gotten the text that we’re going to call you, but everybody is in Manhattan, so it’s six hours [of time difference], so I thought, ‘They’re calling me up with a job offer. I know this. This is the tone when they all get on the phone together, and oh, s—.’”

“So I had to wait till Friday late afternoon, and they were all, ‘It’s Dick Wolf and it’s Chris Meloni and isn’t this great?’” she continues. “I said, ‘Yeah. And?’ ‘And it starts next Thursday.’ ‘Right.’ So you have that panic. You think, ‘How am I gonna explain this to my husband and everybody else here?’”



Mastrantonio had previously worked in the LAW & ORDER universe, playing Captain Zoe Callas on LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, which gave her some insight into the world she was walking into.

“The great machine that is Dick Wolf enterprise—it’s wonderful, I have to say; they treat you very well,” she says. “Everybody gets on the phone immediately. So, basically, you don’t have to do anything…when the car pulls up to collect you at your house, you have to have your bags, and then they just take over. And that’s the very nice thing about Dick Wolf. [Plus] great scripts.”

On ORGANIZED CRIME, Isabella had a second-chance at life: She and her grandchildren relocated to the U.S. in the hopes of escaping from the danger they were facing in Italy—including her brother, Rocco, who was the head of the Camorra criminal organization. But with the Camorra now causing problems in New York, and facing off against Los Santos (a group that has been causing problems for OCCB since season 4), Stabler needs Isabella’s help to get intel…and her family needs the NYPD’s protection.

“I think she has no choice but to trust him,” Mastrantonio says. “I think that if he’s going to be successful, he has to know everything she knows, because she really knows what goes on at the dinner tables and behind closed doors—perhaps, ish—amongst these families. And how ruthless they can be. So I think that’s a little bit hard to imagine: No one is spared if it’s attacking the business.” 

“So she has no choice but to trust him, and I think that’s the attraction,” she continues. “Because…she’s strong. I don’t know that she’s tough, she’s strong. But she can be open and vulnerable with him. And once you cross that Maginot Line, once you’re there, you’re okay; then it’s a relationship. It’s actually a relationship. It’s not a romantic relationship, but it is one of trust. And I don’t think that, for her, she’s had that. I think it’s the most intelligent—emotionally intelligent—relationship she’s ever had, because it’s responsive, not reactive.”


Law and Order Organized Crime Isabella

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME — “PROMESSE INFRANTE” Episode 504 — Pictured: (l-r) Alberto Frezza as Roman Spezzano, Mary Elizbeth Mastrantonio as Isabella Spezzano — (Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/PEACOCK)

But what Isabella doesn’t know, yet, is that her family has already been attacked: After a shootout between members of Camorra and Los Santos—which the NYPD responded to—her grandson Roman (Alberto Frezza) was wounded…and her other grandson, Pietro (Luca Rickman), was fatally shot by Elliot’s son (and new cop), Eli (Nicky Torchia). And there’s also the lingering danger of Camorra trying to get their own revenge on Isabella, too.

“Oh, I think the gloves are off,” Mastrantonio teases about how Isabella will respond to her family being in danger in “Lago D’Averno.” “I think she’d be a lioness. And knowing the family [the way] that she does, I think her imagination…often we say, ‘Don’t let your imagination run away with you.’ She would because they’ll think of anything and everything.”

As Isabella scrambles to protect her loved ones from a potential attack, “One thing I would query with Isabella is, if she wanted to be so remote, why [did she choose to live in] a horse farm…really?” Mastrantonio says with a laugh. “Where is she? She’s right there! Here’s her address and her private phone number. [But]…I think she has to figure out what the best thing she can do for her family is. She was basically, as I think of it now, [in] self-induced witness protection.”

LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME, Thursdays, Peacock.

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