Since he put down his badge as Detective Elliot Stabler, fans have wondered why Christopher Meloni left SVU and why he came back for its spinoff, Organized Crime.
Meloni made his debut as Detective Stabler in the Law & Order spinoff, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, in September 1999. The show followed Stabler and his partner, Detective Olivia Benson, as they worked in the Special Victims Unit in a fictionalized version of the New York City Police Department. Meloni starred on the series for 12 seasons until he left in May 2011.
However, that wasn’t the last time Law & Order fans saw Detective Stabler. Meloni returned to the role in April 2021 in the Law & Order spinoff, Law & Order: Organized Crime, which saw Stabler return to the police force only to learn how much the criminal justice system had changed in the past decade.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2021, Meloni confessed that he didn’t miss SVU when he wasn’t on it, but he’s ready to return to the franchise. “I would have no problem admitting to it. But I was pleasantly surprised it played out as well as it did,” he said. Because, you know, that’s not how life shakes out, right? You can have all the dreams you want, all the preconceived notions of how it’s going to be. But I must say, the intervening decade was everything I could have hoped for.”
So why did Christopher Meloni leave SVU and what made him come back and reprise his role as Detective Elliot Stabler? Read on for that answer.
Image: Virginia Sherwood/NBC.
Why did Christopher Meloni leave SVU?
So…why did Christopher Meloni leave SVU? In an interview with Men’s Health in August 2021, Meloni revealed that he left SVU after season 12 due to issues with his contract negotiation. Meloni told the magazine that he asked NBC for a more pay, but when network couldn’t give him the salary that he wanted, he tried to negotiate the number of the episodes he was in, which the creators of SVU also couldn’t approve either.
“My thought was: Instead of 22 episodes, bring me back for nine episodes, or bring me back for 18 episodes. They literally came to me on a Thursday night and said, ‘This is the deal. We want the answer by tomorrow. It’s our way or no way,'” he said. Meloni responded by telling the creators of SVU, “I don’t want to fuck around with you guys. This is what I want. If you can’t do it, that’s fine. Let’s figure out my exit.”
In an interview with The New York Post in July 2020, Meloni also revealed that he left SVU simply because he wanted “new adventures.” As fans remember, Stabler, who was married with five kids, left the series after retiring from the police force following a self-defense shooting in the season 12 finale.
“How I left was a different issue and had nothing to do with the Law & Order people, the SVU people or with Dick Wolf,” Meloni said. “I left with zero animosity, but I did leave clearly and open-eyed in going forward and finding new adventures. “I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do, keep moving forward.”
He continued, “I had done the Law & Order way of storytelling, which they do really well, and I was interested in telling stories from a different angle—whether comedic or inhabiting a new world or doing it on different platforms.”
After leaving SVU, Meloni went on to star in shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, Pose and Veep, as well has have starring roles in movies like Wet Hot American Summer and MAXXX. In his interview with The New York Post, Meloni also talked about why he came back to Law & Order for its spinoff, Law & Order: Organized Crime. He revealed that his decision started with a conversation with the franchise’s creator Dick Wolf. “It truly came about by Dick Wolf calling and saying he wanted to discuss a project,” Meloni said. “I was like, ‘Oh, really? OK.’ I was shocked. “I never thought this was going to happen, but the circumstances for me changed. So ‘yes’ became the correct answer.”
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Ilene Chaiken explained how Organized Crime differs from SVU, which may have played a part in Meloni’s decision to return. “It’s not a case of the week, because organized crime doesn’t work in that way,” she said. “It’s an episodic show; the episodes will stand on their own. But the stories will also play out over the course of a whole season.”
Meloni also told EW that he returned for a “variety of personal reasons.” “I was intrigued for a variety of personal reasons,” he said. “If you have, at least from my perspective, a very well-known and beloved TV character who left abruptly and, I would argue, unceremoniously…there’s a built-in recognizability, a thing that needs to be satiated with a sense of closure. Those are all very attractive things.”
As for if fans can expect a permanent return to SVU, Meloni nixed any chance of that. “That, I didn’t want to do,” he said. “That felt like going back to what was. That boat had sailed.”
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Organized Crime air Thursdays s at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on NBC. Stream the next day on Hulu or Peacock.
True Stories of Law & Order
Image: Courtesy of Berkley.
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