After a couple of time changes this week, @kukrae and I arrived at Chelsea Piers for a noon set visit. After a quick hug from Christian, the PA we met last year, and signing the necessary paperwork, he asked us if we wanted another tour or just wanted to go watch. We said “Why not?” and had a mini tour. We saw the hospital set, currently under construction for an upcoming episode. It had served as the editing suite for the “Bachelor” (called “Heart’s Desire”) during Assaulting Reality, which was what we saw filmed last season. We also saw the morgue wall, with the drawers, and the part of the courthouse that is the remaining Mothership set. Also saw the skeleton of an office (DA??) that had Tamara nearly drooling as it had shelving on at least 2 walls that went floor to ceiling.
Then he gave us an intro to the episode they were filming, episode 19, Spellbound which will air later this season.
They had just finished filming one scene and were rehearsing/marking the next so we watched from the perimeter of the bullpen, which is a great vantage point. The bullpen is also a living history of the 18 years of SVU with plaques honoring Huang, Amaro and many others. New since our last visit is the plaque honoring Dodds. Benson’s office is to the right and it’s more spacious than it seems on the show. Cari was surprised to see that they do indeed have a Desk Sgt. between the elevator and bullpen since it seems that people have had a habit of just walking into SVU over the years. Since Video Village, AKA Interrogation Room #1 connects to Benson’s office it was a quick walk between the two spaces to watch rehearsals and filming. Much of what we experienced last time regarding the interaction between the “behind the scenes” staff and cast.
Watching the actors read through the scene in street clothes was surprising, except Kelli and Mariska’s clothes were pretty close to their characters’ clothes. Raul on the other hand was in a white tee shirt, jeans & tennis shoes. This scene was Olivia/Amanda/Sonny and Barba, although Fin’s entrance was referenced when they were deciding how Peter/Sonny should enter. I’ll share more thoughts about the three scenes we watched filmed once the episode has aired.
The funniest take away from this scene was between reads that they started discussing how to perfectly hard boil an egg. Answer, 9 minutes on the heat after bringing to a boil, then run under ice water. Special Eggtimers Unit!
Although the episode wasn’t as dark as others, they were still using humor between reads to break it up. Among the highlights, Mariska’s insistence that “rise up lights”, when said with an American accent, sounded the same as “razor blades” as if said with an Australian accent. Try it, you’ll be saying it for days. I realized it last visit and during the Inside the Actors Studio taping but she really is a goofball.
It was then that Mariska turned toward where we were and her face lit up in a smile. “Welcome back”. To say someone is beaming is often a cliche but in this case it was very true.
On one of Mariska’s two visits to Video Village Tamara mentioned “The Selfie” from Valentine’s Day. Much like last visit, Mariska didn’t completely understand why the selfie was such a big deal when they were “just doing their shtick”. She confirmed that this was Chris’ first visit to set since he left the show. Cari was surprised that it really had been six years that he was gone. Hearing Mariska talk about the selfie were the selfie coming to life verbally.
Seeing this pop up in my Facebook memories today is equally true. I’ll never give up on Benson & Stabler because they’ll never stop being adorable. March seems to mean selfie to them, because the anniversary of this one is coming up.
Mariska’s subsequent visit was near the end - after the rewrite of scene three she wanted to know from Kinan Copen what the vic’s exact words were, because she wanted to be sure it was right when Liv spoke of the testimony. There’s a real respect for the creative process.
We had four visits to Mariska’s suite of rooms. On each of those visits Cari feared our visit was ending as her office is near the set exit/production offices. Although Video Village was quieter than our previous visit, filming was busier with them trying to wrap the episode
The second of the four, during what was a meal break for some but when Mariska was due for a read through, was the longest where Tamara brought what she’d made for Mariska and we discussed the prior visit, including showing Mariska the photo from our last visit. That’s what led to the new, and signed, photo, which we took during our third visit to her office. After each, we happily retreated to our corner of Video Village, glad for more time on set.
We had the opportunity to speak at length with Celine Robinson and Stephanie Marquardt. Christian introduced us to Celine while we were watching a rehearsal. We’d been sitting behind her in Video Village. We started to speak with Stephanie while watching a rehearsal and then continued the conversation in Video Village so as to avoid being run over by a camera. Similar to last time, Cari was surprised at the amount of equipment and technical staff required to stage an episode. Stephanie then introduced us to Kinan Copen who had written No Surrender, the episode that Stephanie had directed. We had a quick hello to Rob Cohen, who we met the last visit.
It was nice to have a quick hello with Ice T who we’d said hello to last time. For as infrequently as Fin has been on SVU in recent years, we were lucky to see Ice both times. We also had a very quick hello with Kelli. She and Peter were on set last time, but Raul wasn’t. It was nice to see Barba in action live.
Watching a (mostly) season 5 marathon makes me realize how much the different hairstyles and colors make Mariska/Olivia look like almost a different person. Olivia’s voice is also very different to Mariska’s, something I really never thought about before.
Most of the SVU crew seems to have an interest in theater, Celine and Cari discussed how amazing Jefferson Mays was as an ME and in Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.
It really is amazing to watch both the on screen and behind the scenes teams work together to create an episode. Here’s to eighteen more years of SVU.
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