In 2011, a contract dispute prompted actor Christopher Meloni to leave “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” (per People), the NBC crime procedural show where he’d spent 12 seasons portraying family man and hotheaded New York Police Department detective Elliot Stabler. Ten years later, Meloni returned to the vast and ever-growing “Law and Order” franchise with a new and very different “SVU” spinoff. He was back as Detective Stabler, but rather than bust a different insidious offender each week, “Law and Order: Organized Crime” utilized a continuing, serialized storyline format, with Stabler trying to bust some of New York’s many entrenched crime syndicates while also dealing with the death of his beloved wife.
The cast of “Law and Order: Organized Crime” is a big one, with lots of familiar faces from TV shows of yore. When they’re not playing criminals and grizzled and cynical officers of the law, they’re hanging out with their loved ones. Here’s a look at the off-screen life spouses and significant others of the cast of the latest “Law and Order” series.
It was virtually love at first sight for Christopher Meloni
With “Law and Order: Organized Crime,” Christopher Meloni returned to his most famous role, that of Detective Elliot Stabler, which is the polar opposite of a part he had in an HBO series in 1989, which he categorized as “immensely forgettable” to Your Tango. Far more memorable is the woman he met on set one day, a crew member named Sherman Williams who arrived at work rocking short and bleached blond hair, cat-eye sunglasses, and atop a motorcycle. “This I gotta meet,” Meloni recalled thinking, but his efforts to romance Williams were met with failure because the production designer had a boyfriend at the time. Two years later, when both parties were single, they started dating again, and in 1995 they married, according to Country Living, in a medieval-themed ceremony on a Malibu, California, beach.
After moving to New York when Meloni landed his starring role on “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” in 1999, the couple grew their family, welcoming daughter Sophia in 2001 and son Dante in 2004, according to Good Housekeeping. Applying her production designer and art director skills to her personal life (she helped execute the look of “Platoon,” “The Chase,” and “Zombie Prom” among other projects), Williams was profiled in Architectural Digest for her nature-inspired work on the family’s 3,000-square-foot apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York.
Dylan McDermott has an active love life
Since his high-profile, Emmy-nominated role as good-guy lawyer Bobby Donnell on “The Practice” in 1997, not too much time passes without Dylan McDermott gracing a high-profile television series. He’s starred on one-season wonders like “Big Shots,” “Hostages,” and “L.A. to Vegas” and longer-lasting fare like “American Horror Story” and “Law and Order: Organized Crime,” where he portrays mob-connected businessman Richard Wheatley, whose pharmaceutical company might hide an illegal drug smuggling operation.
In 2008, McDermott and actor Shiva Rose split after 13 years of marriage (and two daughters), according to the Orlando Sentinel. After the divorce, he “really struggled,” as he told People. “Once I tried to understand that life will always take care of me, Maggie stepped into my life.” The Maggie he’s referring to? Maggie Q, best known for her work on “Nikita” and “Insurgent,” whom he met when both were cast members of the CBS drama “Stalker.”
They called off their four-year engagement, per People, in 2019. McDermott rebounded with Brazilian model Hethielly Beck, but according to the Daily Mail, in 2020, he was spotted canoodling on a beach with Soo Yeon Lee, a South Korea-born table tennis star who won the 2007 U.S. Open of her sport and who now private coaches in Los Angeles, per Page Six, training the likes of Kevin Dillon, Chris Paul, and Steph Curry.
Charlotte Sullivan pretended to be dead and met her husband
Known for playing Marilyn Monroe in the TV miniseries “The Kennedys” and Gail Peck on ABC’s imported Canadian police drama “Rookie Blue,” Charlotte Sullivan figured prominently in the first season of “Law and Order: Organized Crime.” She portrayed Detective Gina Cappelletti, who goes deep undercover and romances Richard Wheatley to get inside of his crime ring, only to suffer some tragic results.
Both Sullivan and actor Peter Stebbings appeared in the 2007 Canadian murder mystery miniseries “Across the River to Motor City.” And that grim show introduced the future married couple to each other. “I met Peter in a graveyard while I was playing a dead body and his character was in attendance at my funeral,” Sullivan told HuffPost, adding that they share a daughter and have a bulldog named Penelope.
Stebbings has numerous other TV credits, including stints on the popular “Murdoch Mysteries,” “Bates Motel,” and “The Borgias.” He’s also a filmmaker and made his directorial debut in 2009 with “Defendor,” a dark comedy starring Woody Harrelson as a wannabe superhero. It earned Stebbings a Best Original Screenplay nomination at the Genie Awards, the now-defunct Canadian equivalent of the Academy Awards.
Mariska Hargitay met Peter Hermann while doing Law and Order: SVU
Born in New York City to German parents, according to Broadway.com, Peter Hermann was raised in Germany until the age of 10, at which point he returned to the U.S. and learned English. Before long, he was studying at Yale University and making his way as an actor on stage and on screen. In the former, he’s appeared on Broadway in productions of “Judgment at Nuremberg” and “War Horse,” and for the latter, he was on “Guiding Light,” had a major role in “United 93,” played love interest Charles Brooks over seven seasons of the TV Land dramedy “Younger,” has pitched Persil ProClean laundry detergent in commercials, and in 2002, was cast in the recurring role of criminal defense attorney Trevor Langan on “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” which is where he met Mariska Hargitay, who portrays Det. Olivia Benson on that show and its spinoff, “Law and Order: Organized Crime.”
It was co-star Christopher Meloni who first knew that the two were a match. “He’s on the show as a guest actor, and I’m looking at her, looking at him, and I’m seeing how she’s acting, right?” he told People. “And she’s just, ‘Tee-hee, tee-hee, I don’t even care about him or anything like that.'” Sure enough, Hargitay and Hermann started dating and got married in 2004 and are now the parents of three children.
Isabel Gillies is also a writer, and so is her husband
Isabel Gillies made her acting debut in Whit Stillman’s iconic indie comedy “Metropolitan” but only acted sporadically over the next three decades. Her most notable role: Kathy Stabler, the occasionally seen wife of troubled NYPD detective Elliot Stabler on “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.” She reprised the role in 2021 to launch the Det. Stabler-centered spinoff “Law and Order: Organized Crime,” where Kathy promptly died, setting the action of the show in motion. That means Gillies can go back to her primary career: writing. According to her website, she’s the bestselling author of four books, including the comforting “Cozy,” the young adult novel “Starry Night,” and “Happens Every Day,” a memoir about her divorce from her first husband, a college professor.
Fortunately, as detailed in “A Year and Six Seconds,” she found love again, with fellow writer Peter Lattman. He’s a financial reporter and features writer who wrote for such high-end print media stalwarts as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He now pens pieces for The Atlantic, the cerebral magazine of which he’s also a vice-chairman. Lattman spends the rest of his professional time as the managing director of media for Emerson Collective, a progressive think tank.
Ben Chase's spouse became an online entrepreneur when the pandemic lost her a Broadway gig
Assisting the man-on-a-mission Stabler on “Law and Order: Organized Crime” is Detective 1st Grade Freddie Washburn, a former narcotics investigator. He’s portrayed by Ben Chase, in his first major television role.
In 2020, Chase married another actor, Rachel Schur. In addition to some small roles on TV, including on Amazon’s “Mozart in the Jungle,” Schur co-starred in the national touring production of the musical “Jersey Boys” and played multiple characters, including the major parts of Roxie Hart, Annie, and Mama Morton in the long-running Broadway revival of “Chicago.”
When Broadway theaters closed down for what turned out to be more than a year in March 2020, owing to coronavirus-related concerns, the couple moved to Schur’s hometown of Melbourne, Florida, and she started working on her side hustle: social media management and consulting, full-time. Along with Chase, who supplements his acting income by creating websites and e-commerce services, started Schur Thing Media. “Before I knew it, I’d tripled my client list,” Schur told Business Insider.
Jennifer Van Dyck met Jonathan Walker when they played kissing siblings
As one of the major TV franchises that shoots in New York instead of Los Angeles, the various “Law and Order” series have frequently made use of the huge talent pool of Broadway-level actors living and working in the city. Among them is theater performer Jennifer Van Dyck, who has appeared as 10 separate characters on four different “Law and Order” shows. Her most recent foray: a recurring role on “Law and Order: Organized Crime” as Judge Sharone Lee.
According to Total Theater, Van Dyck met her future husband, actor Jonathan Walker, when they were both cast in a production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” at the Old Globe Theatre in London in 1990. They portrayed brother and sister Ophelia and Laertes, respectively, although in this staging they were also romantically involved. Offstage, Van Dyk and Walker were a couple for nine years before they married. In 2010, they collaborated again at least four more times, all for comic playwright Charles Busch. “We spend 23 hours a day together and that one hour apart is if you add up all the bathroom time,” Walker quipped to Call Me Adam.
Like his wife, Walker knows his way around network TV crime procedurals — he’s guest-starred on “The Blacklist,” “Person of Interest,” “Blue Bloods,” “Bull,” and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit,” where he portrayed three different characters in three episodes spanning a 17-year period.
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