‘If You Need to Throw Anyone Under the Bus, Let It Be Me’

“The audience — I’m theirs,“ says Giddish. “They get really annoyed at Rollins, and other times they say, ‘Oh my God, I love her for that!’� Photo: Zach Dilgard/NBC

When Kelli Giddish joined Law & Order: SVU in 2011, the blockbuster NBC procedural was in a moment of transition. Christopher Meloni, who played Elliot Stabler, the longtime partner of lead Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), had just announced he’d be leaving the series after more than a decade. Unlike the original Law & Order, in which the main detectives are a source of appeal but not critical to the overall audience investment, the fond, sometimes contentious, never quite romantic (but maybe?) partnership between Benson and Stabler was a primary source of fuel for the SVU fandom. Giddish — with her character, Amanda Rollins — was stepping into a role in which her onscreen colleagues and off-screen audience were intensely skeptical she could fill Stabler’s shoes.

Almost 12 years later, Giddish’s character exits the series a beloved figure. Rollins was often a source of strife, enduring multiple personal crises including a gambling addiction; becoming a mother under myriad, uh, difficult circumstances; several intense family dramas with her parents and her sister; multiple near-death experiences; and — finally — a slow-burn romance with her former partner, Dominick Carisi (Peter Scanavino). In Giddish’s final episode as a series regular, Rollins has an unusually happy ending: She and Carisi organize a surprise courtroom wedding before Rollins leaves the SVU for a professorship at Fordham.

In spite of being the source of great fan angst, Rollins’s story lines were far from a source of frustration for Giddish, who spent her time on SVU pushing for even more tumult in the character’s life. “It’s more fun to play,� she says, and it made her ending feel earned. “It’s not like, Look at the blonde girl who got married,� Giddish said. “People were really happy for her.� She also insists that Rollins’s exit from the show is something she welcomes. “This was the right time to let her have a dénouement into finding joy.�

There are few TV series left where actors have an opportunity to play the same character for more than a decade. What does it feel like to know you won’t have this character in your life anymore? Or at least not as much — I assume we’ll see Rollins now and again on SVU or maybe Organized Crime.
TV lends itself to getting up and doing hard work and failing miserably at one scene on a Tuesday and getting up on a Wednesday and doing a bang-up job. It’s so unlike a film, where it’s just a brief moment in time. This is something I put work in day in and day out. And my life experiences inform Rollins’s.

I became a mother twice over on the show. I got married, I got divorced, I got married again. I found joy and contentment. My personal life reflects what Rollins is going through. I’m excited about being turned out into this wild, new landscape. When I got on SVU, Netflix was peddling DVDs, you know?

There are a bunch of streamers out there now. They need workhorses. I love to work. And I love the process of creating something new, which I can’t wait to do next. Yes, the door is always open to return to Rollins because that’s somebody we created; it’s someone who’s been in people’s living rooms week in and week out. The audience — I’m theirs. They know me. They get really annoyed at Rollins, and other times they say, “Oh my God, I love her for that!�

When you started this role, did you have a sense of who Rollins would be, or were you figuring her out over many episodes? 
When I got this job, Warren Leight had come to the helm to show-run. I met him when I was 18 and doing playwriting conferences, coming from the theater world. We were riffing about the character and what she could be before the show even started filming. We had talked about this gambling addiction — you never see a woman with that kind of issue. Instead of slapping it on her, it kind of creeped into her character. It gave me something to wrestle with. That’s something I always begged the procedural world to have: something to fight against, something to overcome, something to be triumphant about when you finally made it through.

“She’s thinking, Wait, what am I doing here? I don’t need this anymore. That really resonated with me personally.� Photo: Will Hart/NBC

We’ve learned so much about who Rollins is and where she comes from over these 12 years. How did you develop it all? 
You go, Huh, why did Rollins move from Georgia to New York? Then you create a whole backstory for that. Well, she was assaulted. You dive into an episode where you see the ramifications of that. It became organic out of the questions you would ask: Where is her dad? What’s that relationship like? Michael Chernuchin came on, and he was big into mining things we hadn’t delved into yet.

Some came from the writers’ room, but some came from you?
It was always a great marriage.

Really?
It was very much a two-sided dialogue, respectful and thoughtful in terms of introducing ideas from one side to the other and tossing things back and forth. And also life. My personal life choices influenced them heavily. I’d come in and say, “Okay, guys, I’m pregnant! So whatever you were thinking for this season …�

They could’ve gone the route where you spend a few months standing behind filing cabinets, I guess. 
Right! When you have a showrunner who supports you and doesn’t take it as, Oh, fuck! but as, Oh, wow, cool, what can we do with this …? If they take it as an opportunity instead of something closing on them, then it’s a time for creativity and opportunity. It’s a time for possibility.

It does feel like, more than once, the fictional choices Rollins made were ones that also made SVU viewers very upset. 
I always said to Warren, “If you need to throw anyone under the bus, let it be me.�

Why?
Because it’s more fun to play with! Because of the longevity of this character. It’s not that I’m trying to annoy the fans or anything, but people aren’t perfect. Let’s show that.

People make bad decisions, then they crawl their way out and make it better for themselves. That’s storytelling: somebody overcoming something. So if you need to have somebody not exactly make the best decisions in life and you have to deal with the consequences, let it be me.

That makes sense in terms of playing a more interesting character, but SVU fans are so invested. Was it hard on the reception side? People have very strong emotions about these characters.
Yes, they do. But look how it turns out. The triumphs are really earned.

Rollins and Carisi got married. They’re happy. Look at the intimacy. Look at that scene in bed where they know they’re going to exchange vows, and the kids jump in, and she can experience that intimacy with someone who loves her so much after having been hurt and pushing people away. Look at this rare happy ending this character got. People were really happy for her.

When it was announced you’d be leaving the show, there was a lot of speculation about whose decision that was. How did that conversation go? 
It came from an organic place in the character’s story line. And I think that was reflected beautifully in this half of the season. She starts off being shot with this gun in her face. She’s thinking, Wait, what am I doing here? I don’t need this anymore. That really resonated with me personally. I just celebrated my one-year anniversary last year. I have two boys that are 7 and 4. I get to chaperone their trips at school this week.

“I’ll do it. I’ll break the rules. Let’s show the growth.� Photo: Scott Gries/NBC

It’s not unheard of for this franchise to stage an exit by dramatically killing off a character. Is that something you were worried about? 
I wouldn’t say I was worried, but I was invested in the details of how they were going to conceptualize this pause. When the writers said it was going to be a happy ending, I was like, Huh, okay. That’s rare. There was time to show the journey of making the choice to be a professor, making the choice to get married. There was a time to show that in stark contrast to the brassy, balls-out character she’s always been. Let it be me. You know what I mean? I’ll do it. I’ll break the rules. Let’s show the growth.

As a viewer, I’ll admit I was wondering if her exit would be much more alarming. 
I was like, Are we sure she doesn’t get mixed up in something big and messy?

Like maybe she goes undercover or something.
But that didn’t feel right. It was not what was resonating right now. I think it went the right way.

And it does leave the door open for her to return. 
Sure.

I’ve always felt that SVU has a different feeling from other police procedurals on TV; even within the Law & Order franchise, it has its own distinctive emotional tone. Given how big the Dick Wolf universe has gotten, does it feel increasingly connected to all the other shows, or does it feel like its own tightly run ship? 
It does feel very different and very individual in the challenges and what it’s trying to accomplish. And when you have someone like Mariska Hargitay onscreen for 24 years, it’s going to make a difference. She’s a legacy in her own right.

It’s about the worst things people do to each other. People say, off the cuff, “I think rape is worse than murder.� Those are the things we’re tackling. The worst things people can do to each other and the most inexplicable. Then it catches the bad guy. There’s something so satisfying about that for the audience because the stakes are so high.

Your tenure on SVU overlapped with a period of newly public interest in cop shows and their role in American life. Has your thinking about this genre changed over your time working on the show? 
My role as an actor is to look at a script when it comes out and say, Is this how it’s done? Is this how I should do it? Is this right? Not in terms of right or wrong but: Does it reflect truthfully, to the best of my knowledge, how this would happen? It’s a huge world; that is my part in it.

Do you have any favorite guest stars from your time on SVU?
I got to do a story line with Dallas Roberts, who, when I first moved to New York, I was like, He’s just the best actor. And such a cool kid. Susie Essman, Ed Asner — like, what are you talking about? It’s a crazy ecosystem. And when I got there, I got to work with Richard Belzer. I went and shook his hand, and I said “Hi, my father is very excited that I’m on the same show as you. He saw you do stand-up once, and I’m supposed to say that I’m very happy to meet you, Big Dick Belzer.�

What did he say? 
He was like, Damn right, I’m Big Dick Belzer. Ha, I don’t know exactly what he said, but I ended up going to his house in the South of France. I was like, I love this job.

It sounds like, as someone who loves working but also someone who’s been through a lot of personal change in the last decade, SVU has been a really important source of stability for you. 
That’s right. Like, slippers are really nice to have. I wear them more than anything else.

Is there a part of you that’s relieved to not be wearing slippers anymore?
It’s titillating that there are so many outlets right now. There’s such a demand for content. Little ideas can turn into characters that can turn into something else. I’m interested in going back to those small ideas that don’t come from anybody else’s mind but mine.

The same week your final SVU episode aired, a big L.A. Times piece came out with allegations of misconduct against the show’s current showrunner, David Graziano. I know you’ve said before that you had positive experiences with him, but I did want to ask about it again because SVU is a show about people who abuse their power. 
It’s upsetting to read, but that’s not my experience on the show. And I’m still in celebratory mode and in awe of the work we did this year. Not only for the last 12 years but this year. To write a story, to pause the character’s story in this way — I’m very proud of it.