Chris Meloni Was Very Guarded Towards This ‘Law & Order SVU’ Showrunner Before He Left

A new ‘Law & Order SVU’ showrunner had a hard time figuring out how to move the show forward without Chris Meloni.

Law & Order SVU’s whole makeup changed after its longtime star Chris Meloni left the franchise. One of his last conversations before leaving the show was with a showrunner. But according to the showrunner, Meloni’s interaction with him wasn’t all that helpful.

This ‘Law & Order’ showrunner described what Chris Meloni was like after leaving

Meloni’s unexpected departure from the program created some understandable doubt regarding the show’s future success. The series was also handed off to showrunner Warren Leight in the midst of the star’s exit. It didn’t help that Leight was confused by his interaction with Meloni as the latter was on his way out.

“I ran into Chris twice in the transition month where I was just beginning to kick the tires, and he was guarded with me,” Leight once said in an interview with TV Guide. “I said, ‘Well, I’m hoping it works out.’ He was like, ‘We’ll see.’ The impression people had was that this was this bizarre ballet that happens every spring. You know, there’s sort of a ‘nothing gets done until the last minute, and then it all gets done’ mentality.”

But before Meloni’s departure, Leight already felt that the relationship between Meloni’s Elliot Stabler and Hargitay’s Olivia Benson needed a change. So Meloni’s exit might’ve just made Leight’s original plans easier.

“I had a theory about the co-dependence of Elliot and Olivia, and I had questions about the health of that relationship. One of the things that worried me was, like in any family dynamic, after a while people get assigned certain roles. In a healthy environment, people can switch roles a little more. I worried that there was too much anger coming from Elliot and too much empathy coming from Olivia. I had just begun to wonder, ‘What do we do to shake it up?’ Then Chris’ departure happened. It forced the issue in a good way: Instead of having to push people out of their roles, by definition their roles have changed now,” he added.

Neal Baer felt Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay were both essential to ‘Law & Order SVU’

Baer was one of SVU’s longest showrunners. He was in charge of the show from season 2 to 12 before handing over duties to Leight. Although his work contributed to SVU’s success, Baer believed that Meloni and Hargitay were the core of the series. Each actor’s respective characters represented different responses to criminal injustice. Like Leight, Baer saw Stabler’s anger and Hargitay’s empathy as key components to the series.

“The secret of the show’s success? I think it’s the teaming of Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni. I think they’re the longest running team in drama; Ozzie & Harriet beat them in comedy—they ran for 14 years. They’ve got great chemistry. Chris represents the rage we feel about the crimes and Mariska represents the empathy we feel toward the victims,” Baer once said according to Mr. Media.

This was partially why Baer was confident that both Hargitay and Meloni would stick around for as long as the series did.

“They’re as committed to playing Olivia and Elliot as they were the first day I walked in and saw them in the interrogation room,” Baer once told TV Line. “It’s an amazing thing that never lags. [Mariska and Chris] are so professional and the ultimate artists in that they’re there to realize their characters, making them as strong, believable and compelling as possible. And there aren’t a lot of opportunities to do that [in television].”

How Kelli Giddish and Danny Pinto helped counter Chris Meloni’s character in ‘Law & Order SVU’

After Meloni left, Leight was inspired to find new detectives for Olivia Benson to balance the show with. Newcomers like Kelli Giddish’ Amanda Rollins would help breathe new life into the series.

“You have detectives now coming out of college with degrees in forensic psychology. That’s Kelli Giddish’s character,” Leight said. “Amanda Rollins is up from the South. She’s self-made, and she’s had a lot of book training. She has the kind of training you get now at Quantico. That was missing from the squad room: Somebody who approaches things with actual technical knowledge … an almost intellectual, academic, very structured approach.”

Danny Pinto was also brought in as a counter to Stabler’s more aggressive style of policing.

“The other thing that seems to be missing from the squad room was somebody who [is] actually trying to elicit confessions through empathy,” Leight said. “Olivia has great empathy for the victims, but there was a lot of shouting at the perps, especially with Chris’ character. That doesn’t get you a good confession. I thought it would be interesting to have somebody come in who’s almost a con artist, who really has an intuitive sense of when people are lying or telling the truth. [Danny’s character] reads people very well. He gets on their side and takes the onus of the crime they committed away from them. He appears to not be judging them.”