Reid Scott Had a Sixth Sense About 'Law & Order'
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When he was just starting out, Reid Scott desperately wanted a guest actor spot on Law & Order. "I was probably the only one in my circle of actor friends who didn't appear on the show," Scott says. "It was not for lack of trying, believe me. I wanted it so badly, because it was a rite of passage when you're 20, 21. Everyone I knew was doing it, and for whatever reason, it never came my way."
He eventually moved to Los Angeles, and a role on Law & Order (or its spinoffs, like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit or Law & Order: Criminal Intent) never materialized. "It was always in the back of my mind," Scott says.
Flash forward about 20 or so years, and days after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike, Scott was at home in Los Angeles—where he lives with his wife Elspeth Keller, and their two children, ages 6 and 9—reading the trade publication, Deadline. "I rarely read Deadline because I find it just…" he trails off, before clarifying, "I would need several mental health days if I went down the wrong Deadline rabbit hole. So I just don't, and for whatever reason, this one day I did. The first article I see was Jeffrey Donovan leaving Law & Order. And I don't know why, I just had this lightning bolt, like, 'Oh, they're going to come after me.' And then I moved on with my day and I didn't even think. I didn't mention it to anybody. I didn't say anything about it. I put it out of my head."
Three days later, his agent and manager called. As Scott recounts, they told him something came up out of the blue. Before they even started to explain, he guessed, "Is it Law & Order?" And now, years into his career, Scott is a regular on season 23, appearing as Detective Vincent Riley. "Not only am I scratching this itch from 20 plus years ago, but also, it's just fun to run around the streets of New York with a gun, a badge, and a bad attitude."
Once in a while, he says, he gets those gut feelings. They were common early on in his career. "Sometimes I'd read a breakdown, and be like, 'Oh, that's meant for me.' And then you just angle all your energy towards that thing." He adds, "My psychic radar comes on."
That intuition proved correct for Scott when it came to joining the long-running procedural, which was rebooted in 2021. Law & Order, he says, is a well-oiled "machine"—in the best way possible. "You can't help but give yourself over to it and become part of the machine. I've never done anything like this before; I'm still really enthralled by all that. How wow, this thing, it just takes you. You show up on the day and you do the stunt, say the line; you clack the handcuffs on the bad guy; you are a super cop; and you give your testimony, and you go home. And then you rinse and repeat. So the challenge becomes: can you keep up with that grueling schedule because it's a marathon, having to do it week after week after week after week."
Joining the Dick Wolf Cinematic Universe has been a learning experience for Scott. Recently, six casts from Wolf's procedurals got together for dinner in New York City. "I was the new guy," he says. "And I was like, 'Holy shit.' First of all, the level of talent in this room is just insane. There were six casts, like 50 actors in one room. Dick Wolf and his company command literally an army of shows; it's really unique, and they are incredible at the business of television. They know how to make shows. They know how to keep shows on the air. And I was like, 'Oh my God, I have so much to learn about how this all works.' But it just blows me away."
He's beginning to learn the secret to the success: namely, the faith that exists in Wolf. "There's a level of trust—a camaraderie and a shorthand that begins to develop," he says. "It's so smart that he started that back in the nineties and was like, I want to work with the same people. And it really feels like a family. It feels like a mafia family. And then I've married into it!" He jokes, "I'm learning the secrets; I'm starting to hear about where all the bodies are buried."
Key, too, to Wolf's shows continuing to feel relevant is how they've relied on "ripped from the headlines" plots. In fact, Scott's debut episode dealt with the issue of Israel, Hamas, and campus free speech post October 7. No big deal, right? He was nervous, but excited to tackle the heavy subject matter in his very first appearance.
"People are finding it very difficult to have the conversations about those topics. So I think they love when a show that they love broaches the conversation for them; it gets them thinking about it. There's not many shows that can pull that off," he says. "The show, because it's such an institution, it's almost transcended itself in that it has this responsibility to deliver some of these social messages to a network viewing audience."
The transition to Law & Order, and its ability to react to the national discourse, is in stark contrast to Scott's work on Veep, the buzzy HBO political satire that ran for seven seasons before ending in 2019.
"Trump killed Veep," he says with a smile. "That was the joke amongst us when he was elected. We literally had a meeting about it [with] David Mandel, who was our showrunner at the time. We were really priding ourselves [how] Veep always cracked the joke before it actually happened. It was the opposite of Law & Order—we weren't ripping anything from the headlines. We were writing gags, and then it would fucking happen. And everyone was all like, 'How did they predict it?'"
He continues, "It got to the point where everything that was happening in politics around the 2016 election was so insane. The concern was, well, now it looks like we're just aping the insanity of what's actually happening, which is never what we did before." It was the right time to say goodbye to Veep, Scott says, but that doesn't mean he doesn't miss the show. "I think now there's even a greater need for a show like Veep. Politics went... I don't think it's recovered, but it went so gonzo for a while that we sat in stark contrast to that."
He would be up for a reunion, and is hoping one materializes at some point. Veep, he says, was monumental for his career, and remains a huge point of pride. "It changed my life," Scott says. "It really did: Intellectually, artistically, personally, across the board." Plus, he adds, the cast remains close, and even has a white elephant Christmas party every year, so to get everyone back together officially would be a dream.
But, getting some daylight between him and playing Dan—who was a deeply ambitious version of a D.C. archetype and a scheming asshole—has been critical. When "you spend enough time with a character, you start to blend with that character," he says. "I'll admit that some of Dan got into me. I'm like, I don't like that feeling so much. And on the professional side of things, you start to get typecasted. It was such a specific kind of voice, that a lot of the roles I was getting was basically just Dan."
Since Veep, he's played Gordon Ford on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, appeared in episodes of shows like The Afterparty and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and is set to play another character named Dan in the upcoming Prime Video romantic comedy The Idea of You (which stars Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine). The diversity of genre is clear in his post-Veep career, but his current role on Law & Order may be his biggest move yet.
"I love talking about the business side of things, seeing how procedurals and comfort TV have had this huge resurgence," he says. "My hope is that now in this post-strike landscape, that even the streamers and cable are going to understand the value of the format of the procedural, but just with the language or content parameters that are appropriate for streaming and cable and what you can deliver."
Scott points to Poker Face, created by Rian Johnson, as a great example of a fresh procedural. "Poker Face is brilliant because they're delivering up something so familiar, but in a completely fresh way, and in a way that's so ultra current—because every other word is the F word," he says. "And they can be a little hot! They can be a little risqué. They can push the envelope. And that's what people are responding to: Something that feels familiar, but it's brand new."
By the simple nature of Law & Order being in its 23rd season, it's not brand new, but those who work on the show are always trying to evolve. "I love the energy that comes from our cast, and our current slate of writers and producers, because everyone seems to have the same attitude," he says. "It's like: How do we nudge it two degrees that way, so that seasons from now we're in a brand new fresh place that the audience is really going to love. And that's how you stay current. Because it's an aircraft carrier, so it is incremental. You don't want to shake all of your fans off while you're trying to do something new."
Talking about the future of the procedural is exciting, and it raises the question: does he see a long future ahead of him at Law & Order? "I am so happy right now," Scott says. "I'm usually of the mind: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I also know my wife laughs at me. She's like, 'Your ADD kicks in and you need to do something.' But she and I—she's a screenwriter, so we're producing a couple things together. And I'm set to direct a feature. So we'll see. I'm having so much fun with this. I'm trying to just focus on that for right now. But I've got to say I'm so happy."
He continues, "It definitely got the wheels turning of how do I keep this going? How do I stay right here, right now? Which has never been a luxury that I've had. Even with Veep, it was so hectic and so chaotic, and there was a certain sense of security there. You knew you were coming back after a while. But it's such a warm and engaging and stimulating environment to be working in right now, that I want to stay. For the first time in a long time, I just want to be where my feet are."
Law & Order airs Thursday nights on NBC, and streams on Peacock. Watch now
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