I’m Talent Now, Thanks to Law & Order
by Peter Lettre
July 15, 2008
(This article was published in the July 21, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.)
I was sitting at a warped card table in a church basement on a cold Monday morning last December, surrounded by guys dressed like homeless people, trying to make small talk with Vincent D’Onofrio. He’d called in sick on Thursday and Friday, and the shoot had to be pushed back. He looked uncomfortable in his rumpled suit and tie, his giant frame heaped onto a metal folding chair.
“You feeling better?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Good.”
He looked at me as if it was still my turn to speak.
“At least you had the weekend to recuperate.”
“That’s true.”
A long silence was interrupted by one of the extras, something of a local celebrity who calls himself Radioman. He approached the table, tiny boombox dangling from his neck, and dropped a stack of glossy photos in front of Mr. D’Onofrio, which the actor began to sign.
“What’ve you done?” Radioman asked me.
“Commercials, mostly.”
“Yeah? I played Moonvest on 30 Rock.”
I was fulfilling a rite of passage for New York actors: shooting my first episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. On this episode, “Please Note We Are No Longer Accepting Letters of Recommendation From Henry Kissinger,” written by Marygrace O’Shea, I had been hired to play a pastor, of undisclosed denomination, with the misleadingly suggestive name of Minister Lester. Lester runs a soup kitchen uptown and was acquainted with one of the victims. It’s one of those bridge scenes that cop shows are littered with, full of enough exposition to move the story forward, but with just enough suspicion to keep it interesting.
“Yeah, I drove Denise home a few times. She was terrified of her ex,” says Minister Lester, advancing the plot.
“Her ex thought there was something going on between you,” says Detective Goren.
On the day of the shoot, I walked past trees to which pink No Parking permits had been stapled. I reached the corner of 86th and Amsterdam, where I had been told I’d find the “honey wagon,” a term for the trailers where they keep the “talent.” My trailer would have been considered ample were it a walk-in closet, but I was thrilled to have one.
I got into costume—black slacks, white shirt, burgundy windbreaker—and was led to another trailer a few blocks away, where the hair and makeup people sat watching Jerry Springer on TV. The makeup artist blotted my razor burn and the bags under my eyes with a heavy base and dusted my cheeks and widow’s peak with the lighter stuff. Not much they could do with my hair—a quick comb-through and a light spritz. Then back to the trailer to wait for a few hours.
The city is full of people like me. Throw a stone and you’ll hit one. And with every episode of each of the three current Law & Order franchise shows featuring between 10 and 20 non-recurring speaking roles, and with seasons typically stretching over 22 episodes, it’s fair to say that Law & Order is something of a sugar daddy to New York actors.
“I feel like we are a big part of the community, and that’s something that I take a lot of pride in,” said Kimberly Hope, casting director for Criminal Intent. “Not only are we able to give so many people a lot of work very early on in their careers, but … residuals! I mean, people can live off of residuals if they do enough shows
Ean Sheehy is one of those guys cashing his residual checks every four months, though he’s hardly living off them. With a recurring role as Joshua Simmons, the “accountant nerd” of Criminal Intent, he’s done a couple of shows a season for the past few years, and he maintains a day job at People magazine.
“It was a big deal at the time,” he said of landing that first episode. “I had to audition many times before I got one. Many, many times, come to think of it. So that I thought I would never get one and that there was something wrong with me. And then, finally … right? I was a big shot in my small circle of friends, so that was great. You’ve gained a level of existence somehow.”
So with 200-odd roles to fill a season on each of the franchise’s shows, and an unofficial rule about no repeat actors within any given season—though hopping from one series to another is common—where are they finding the talent?
“We do classes and showcases,” said Ms. Hope. “Meetings with agents and managers who will call and say, ‘I just stumbled upon this girl—will you read her for anything and tell me if she’s good?’ As far as hiring non-actors? It’s never the case where we’ll walk down the street and say, ‘Hey, you look like a nut! Come be on our show.’ Everybody comes in here and auditions. And most of them have some sort of training or experience.”
Even if that training is not strictly in the performing arts: “Given that Law & Order has been around all this time, there are cops, actual former police detectives, who as a second career have started acting,” said Ms. Hope’s associate, Anne Davison.
About an hour into the shoot, I hovered near a video monitor, watching as they lit my stand-in, a burly Cheech Marin-looking guy with long gray hair—an interesting choice, in that he looked nothing like me. A PA leaned in and asked if I wouldn’t, perhaps, be more comfortable in my chair with the rest of the “talent”? She pointed to a director’s chair, a foot from where Kathryn Erbe, the series’ lead, was sitting in hers, reading a Jonathan Safran Foer novel. Mine was piled high with crew members’ coats.
“I’m O.K., thanks,” I said.
The PA went over and moved the coats, placing them on a folding chair next to Radioman. I went and sat down in my chair.
“That’s a pretty good book,” I said.
“Yeah, I like it,” said Ms. Erbe.
My episode aired July 5. My mom threw a Hollywood-premiere-themed party—complete with crepe-paper red carpet, flashbulbs and tinsel-covered shooting stars hanging from the ceiling fan—at my parents’ suburban Virginia home, during what would otherwise have been a routine visit for the Fourth of July weekend. My family cheered as I paraded first my girlfriend, Sara, then my mom down the red carpet. I saw they’d saved me the choice seat on the comfortable side of the old couch to watch the show.
http://www.observer.com/2008/style/I-m-talent-now-thanks-law-order
(I just want to be an extra in a Goren/Eames scene!) 
