NBC finally convinced Sam Waterston to return for its new Law & Order revival
Get your eyebrows and faith in the justice system: Jack McCoy is coming back to Law & Order
Aux News Sam Waterston
It must be nice to be an actor in demand. You can open up the trades, read about the hot new projects in development, and know “these people want me to star in this thing.” Sam Waterston, with all due respect, probably hasn’t felt that way in a while.
It was hopefully a lot of fun for him, then, when NBC announced that it was bringing back regular Law & Order and—before anyone else had even been cast—it said “boy, we would really like to get Sam Waterston back.” Waterston played DA Jack McCoy for years on various Law & Order shows, so his return would signify a major connection to the original series, but newcomers Jeffrey Donovan and Hugh Dancy (plus oldcomer Anthony Anderson, who starred on the show’s original final seasons) were all added to the revival before Jack McCoy.
Was Waterston waiting for NBC and producer Dick Wolf to add some zeroes to however much money they were offering? Was he concerned about fitting into the old Jack McCoy eyebrows? Either way, it’s officially happening now, with Deadline reporting that Waterston has signed a one-year deal to return to Law & Order (which will make this his 17th season on the show).
In a statement, Wolf said that Waterston himself has a “perfect pitch” for Jack McCoy that “both reflects and expands our ability to understand the law.” He also says he’s the “ultimate conscience” of Law & Order and that he hopes Waterston ends up “emulating the career of New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who served until he was 90.” (Waterston just turned 81 in November.)
The new version of the old Law & Order will premiere on NBC on February 24 “as part of a Law & Order Thursday lineup”—which has got to be one of the sweetest phrases NBC has heard in decades. If only it could also bring back Seinfeld and Friends.
44 Comments
I have a feeling they lined him up early, then held the announcement to generate excitement. Every casting notice had people saying, “but we need Sam Waterson”. If he had been announced early, the other casting choices would not have gained as much attention, because people kept looking for hints of whether Watterson would be coming back. I mean I could very well be wrong, but it wouldn’t have been a bad publicity strategy.
The ultimate conscience for Law and Order wasnt Jack McCoy, it was Ben Stone
Michael Moriarty left the show because he wanted Dick Wolf to be fired for a perceived deference to Janet Reno—and canonically they killed off Ben Stone—so unfortunately he’s never coming back.
“Michael Moriarty” is one of those names from the late 80’s-early 90’s where I’m always asking, WTF happened to him??And occasionally, at like 3:48 in the a.m. I’ll look his name up on Wikipedia…And I’ll stop wondering.
Tried to bring his back using his son Peter Stone on two shows. Chicago Law and SVU.
Yeah them killing him offscreen with a heart attack was unfortunate
Yeah, but you never saw McCoy getting punched in the face.Though he probably should have with all the taunting he did to criminals.
Especially considering the shit Jack did. I remember an episode where he gives an unrepentant mob hitman immunity for a bunch of murders just to get some testimony (possibly fabricated) on a mob lawyer. Some conscience.
The greatest indictment of McCoy is the episode where he pressures a paroled sex felon the entire 2nd half of the episode until the man snaps and attacks another woman.
Yes, I wasn’t terribly impressed with Jack McCoy all but threatening to out a teenage girl as a lesbian if she didn’t confess to the manslaughter of her girlfriend we the girlfriend wanted to come and she didn’t. His ADA (Serena Southerlyn) at the time wasn’t terribly impressed but I really wish she’d put up more of an objection though I guess it’s possible that they hadn’t written that part of her backstory (“Is this because I’m a lesbian.”).Then there was the time he put FBI agent Tom Berenger in prison for twenty years when he was clearly taking the fall for his daughter which was plain to see for anyone with a functional pair of eyes (plus a reliable eye-witness had clearly seen him jogging at the time the shooting happened).Yeah but no, saying you can’t be 100% sure he didn’t do it and not putting someone in jail right that moment instead of maybe even just leaving it a bit and doing some actual further investigation, he takes the obviously false confession.What an asshole and a prick.Actually, you know what? Fuck you Jack McCoy, I don’t know why I never didn’t hate you./end vitriol at a fictional character and series of events that never actually happened.Don’t get me started at how bad the SVU detectives are at their jobs and the number of innocent lives they’ve ruined by being so bad at it.
Don’t forget that Jack had a canonical reputation for diddling his ADAs- as he was doing with Claire Kincaid!
You mean the Inquisitor General, Ben Stone?
Sam’s getting to the age where he’s going to have to start considering Old Glory Insurance.
He’s closer to the robots taking over now than he was then so…
“My first task as DA, prosecuting those damned robots!”
Why do the scientists even make them?
If they bring him back they have to have him prosecute a tech billionaire who promoted a self driving car that kills someone.
👏
“Hey, Sam – we’ll let YOU be the one to beat the perps to get convictions”
I misread this as ‘Bill Watterson’, and I immediately thought of cops chasing after perps on wagons
I bet it was that Susie Derkins who killed all these nuns!
I like how it baffles my staff that I have the complete collection of Calvin & Hobbes on my kitchen desk.
I will never cease being amused by swapping the order of Dick Wolf’s names.
Swap the order plus the first letters: Dolf Wick – John’s Dutch cousin.
John Wick’s cousin.
“We can’t say “dick wolf” on TV!”
What about “dickwolves”?
“Basic Lupine Urology”
I got a Community notification for …… oh right.
That’s probably my favorite episode.
It’s very very good, isn’t it?“Not actually police!”Actually, it’s much better than most Law and Order episodes while we’re at it (I actually can’t think of any that are better at the moment to be honest.)
Wow – I totally missed the Hugh Dancy casting and just saw they cast Camryn Manheim (Control from Person of Interest) as the lieutenant to replace Van Buren. This is a really killer cast.
She was also on the Practice. The only thing I remember about that show was John Laroquette showing up occasionally and calling Manheim a “hippo”.
Wasn’t she on another law show as well? I know she was in the cruelly-cancelled Stumptown, but I’m thinking of something older than that. Unless it was actually The Practice and my memory is finally gone.
She was also on The Ghost Whisperer, and on Person of Interest.
Probably. She played Eleanor pretty well. She seems to be good at playing strong women in a position of power (see PoI reference elsewhere in this thread).
POI remains my second most hated series after NCIS. I will fully admit that this is a very juvenile thing, but when DirectTV says “On Person of Interest, they are looking at a person of interest…blah blah blah.” And my head wanted to explode reading the synopsis for that episode. NCIS wins first place simply because it’s NCIS. Challenge me.
Yikes. He looked ancient 10 years ago.
Law & Order stories on the AV Club will always remind me of that epic comment chain from many, many years ago that was just made up of L&O tropes building on each other. It was a remarkable achievement in TV nerdery.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/avclub/sam_waterston_will_be_the_quietly_stern_sam_waterston_type_in_aaron_sorkins_hbo_pilot/( Don’t forget to sort by oldest)
The Lord’s work, that’s what you’re doing.
Oh wow! I didn’t realize there was a Disqus log that wasn’t decimated by “This comment or account was deleted on Disqus before The A.V. Club’s comments were migrated to Kinja.”
It’s probably because this comment section was pre-Disqus so a lot of the ‘names’ (i.e. Law and Order jokes) were just entered in a subject line on a submission form (as opposed to Disqus accounts).At least that’s how I remember it, I haven’t looked at it for a long time as I was still sad at how it was still shredded to some degree by a lot of the lines being cut short and the like.
how does anthony anderson keep getting work?