Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion (29 page)

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Authors: Susan Green,Randee Dawn

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Not that this immediately made life easier, as she ended up doing double-duty with her soap,
As the World Turns
. Fortunately, both shows parsed out her schedule so there would be little to no overlap—there were only two conflicts over the years. And it must have worked for all parties, because at one point Tunie was not only doing the soap
and SVU
and also recurring on the first season of
24
, which films in Los Angeles—and when that was over with she was doing her Broadway producing, and the soap, and the show. “It was a little crazy,” she admits.
As Warner, some of the biggest challenges come from having to stay in character all day and remember lines that can be loaded down with what she calls “technojargon.” Many of her scenes also involve spouting complex dialogue and words as she moves around props or points out evidence, and the combination can be exhausting. “I have days that are light and breezy where I can pop off some stuff, and then I have days where I can’t even turn on the television (between takes) in order to maintain what I have to say,” she says.
But Tunie adds, it’s not about memorization; it’s rarely having a real conversation with any other character that can be hard. “It’s all expository,” she says. “I’m just always there to deliver the facts. When I was playing the attorney (on
ATWT
) it was a similar thing in the courtroom—it’s all question and answer and then you have to figure out your own through line so you remember what the next question is. That’s a skill you develop.”
Ultimately, it all came together well enough that Tunie got moved into the show’s opening credits and group shot (a promotion the franchise’s other, even longer-running medical examiner, played by Leslie Hendrix of
L&O
, has never received). “It’s been a real blessing,” Tunie admits.
And, in at least one case, it’s had some side benefits: When the family dwelling was broken into a few years ago, the police showed up to take down the details before Tunie got home. One officer noticed a photo of the actress, and asked, “Is that Dr. Warner?” Her husband—jazz singer Gregory Generet—acknowledged it was. “The next thing you know there’s four patrol cars swooping into the neighborhood and an unmarked car pulled up and a couple of detectives got out,” says Tunie, laughing. “Then the detectives called me the next day to make sure everything was all right, gave me his card. All because they recognized Dr. Warner!”
B.D. Wong (Dr. George Huang, 2001−Present)
B.D. Wong (Dr. George Huang)
AKA:
Bradley Darryl Wong
Originally From:
San Francisco, Calif.
Selected Other Credits:
(Film)
Mulan II
(Shang, 2004),
Mulan
(Shang, 1998); (TV)
All-American Girl
(Dr. Stuart Kim, 1994−95); (Book)
Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut
Man (2000)
Upcoming Project:
(Film)
Showing Up
(Himself, 2010)
Just the Facts
About Wong:
An actor since childhood, B.D. Wong majored in theater at San Francisco State University, but left after two years. On the East Coast, he landed a plum role as Song Liling in the 1988-90 Broadway show
M. Butterfly
, a slot which earned him Drama Desk, Theatre World, and Tony awards. Most non-theater audiences first got a glimpse of him as Father Ray Mukada in HBO’s
Oz
, in which he appeared from 1997−2003.
By then he already was doing double duty on
SVU
, like fellow
Oz
cast members Christopher Meloni and Dean Winters. In 2000, Wong’s book
Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man
served as a public coming-out for the actor, as he retold the story behind the birth of his twin sons (one of whom died shortly afterward), conceived in surrogacy with his then-partner Richie Jackson.
About Huang:
An FBI forensic psychiatrist, Huang is an outsider brought into the Special Victims Unit to provide a different perspective for the detectives. Little is known about the character except that he can serve as an interpreter for Chinese speakers (Wong himself is not fluent) and he has a low-key, intense-but-gentle approach.
Says Wong, “One, he’s really knowledgeable and two, he’s really into it. He likes to try and figure out why somebody would do something or what they would do next, and he knows a lot about conditions people have, including their proclivities, fetishes, infinite different states of mental health and mental disease. I think he likes to be a part of the puzzle-solving process himself. His compassion is not really active—Dr. Huang is simply there for (victims). He’s always able to say, ‘I’m really sorry about what happened,’ and mean it, but he’s not crying. And they believe him when he says it. And I don’t know anybody like this.”
The Rest of the Story
In certain respects, Huang is a proxy for showrunner and executive producer Neal Baer, a Harvard Medical School graduate and former full-time practicing doctor. With Baer in control up top, says Wong, a medical point of view for the show was required.
“They asked me to come and do four episodes as a kind of audition, to see if it worked, and after those four episodes they asked me to stay on,” Wong recalls. “They weren’t 100 percent sure the character would stick, so they didn’t make a big deal out of who they were going to put in the slot for four episodes. Because it was an experiment on a lot of levels, it was a lot easier than going to a lot of auditions and having other people be in competition.”
Wong’s appearances on the set are infrequent, but can provide the linchpin for any given episode. His character may be taciturn, but Wong insists that’s really not like him: “I’m really a very gooey person. I like hugging people.”
In his time between
SVU
appearances, Wong appears on stage (“I’ve done a play almost every year that I’ve been on the show,” he explains) and has another career as a public speaker. “I’ll talk about any number of different things—choosing a career in the arts, being an ethnic minority, being a gay person, or any of all three of those things. It depends on who invites me,” he says.
He’s generally pleased with the show’s racial mix and approach to racial matters in the storylines. “It’s pretty rare to have a television show with ethnic diversity that doesn’t really flinch, doesn’t really call attention to itself, or that doesn’t labor itself in being ‘diverse,’” he says. “It just is. Which is unfortunately not really common. It’s nice that a show that takes place in New York is as diverse as it is, because I think it’s important for people to understand even if they don’t live in a diverse community what that means and how valuable and interesting that can be.”
And certainly, he’d like to have more to do as Huang, but Wong understands where his character fits in the mix—and besides, if he had more to do there might be fewer plays, or speaking engagements, or even books. “I think I’ve found a rhythm now that’s rather pleasant and that I really like and that I really enjoy, and it allows me to do all these other things, so I try not to complain too much about it,” he says. “As a creative person, as an actor, you’re always looking for more, but I’m at the point now where I feel it’s not really in the cards (on this show), so I try and enjoy it for what it is. And I do think he’s valuable to the show, so I enjoy that aspect of it.”
Wong hasn’t given any real thought to potentially leaving. “I don’t really have a plan. If you told me I was going to be here for twenty more years, which you never could do, I’d have to say I’d have to think about that!”
FORENSICS TECHNICIANS
Mike Doyle (Forensics Tech Ryan
O’Halloran
, 2002−09)
Originally From:
New York City
Other Wolf Films Associations: Law & Order: SVU
(Asst. M.E. Karlan, “Prodigy,” 2002)
Selected Other Credits:
(Film)
Laws of Attraction
(Michael Rawson, 2004); (TV)
Oz
(Adam Guenzel, 2002),
Sex and the City
(Mark, 2000),
ER
(Michael McKenna, 1999)
Upcoming Project:
(Film)
Rabbit Hole
(2010)
Mike Doyle (CSU Tech Ryan O’Halloran)
Just the Facts
About Doyle:
Manhattan-born but Connecticut-raised, Mike Doyle has appeared in feature films and television for the past fifteen years, including
ER
when future
SVU
showrunner Neal Baer was still working there, and a stint on
Oz
with Christopher Meloni. But
SVU
fans have come to enjoy his dozens of appearances as the show’s resident forensics tech. He’s also a filmmaker who produced and starred in 2003’s limited-release
Cutter
and who wrote, produced, and directed the 2006 short
Shiner
. “Some girls in Sweden started an unofficial fan site (for me), and I get a lot of people who say, ‘How do I know you?’” he says. “Though recently, people have been like,
Law & Order
man,
Law & Order
!’” he says about his recognizability factor.
About O’Halloran:
For most of his six-year run on the show, there wasn’t much to know about him except that he was nearly called “Tim.” “The first season (he was on), nobody used his name,” explains Doyle. “Then the first time they used his name ‘Ryan,’ Christopher Meloni said, ‘Wasn’t your name Tim?’ And they used to write for O’Halloran as if he were from the Midwest; there was a scene where we were talking and I said something like, ‘Back on the farm . . .’ and Meloni’s like, ‘Back on the farm in Flatbush?’”
O’Halloran was murdered by a homicidal colleague at the end of season ten.
The Rest of the Story
Doyle’s first
SVU
shot came in season three, as Assistant Medical Examiner Karlan in “Prodigy,” brought on when Tamara Tunie (M.E. Warner) was out. “There were some reshoots that needed to be done—so they asked if I could play the part. Then I was bragging to all my friends that I had this recurring role on
SVU—
that never recurred,” he says.
Doyle praises Baer and executive producer Ted Kotcheff for “creating an atmosphere of respect and safety so everyone can do their work.” But he also reveals that “it’s one of the funniest sets I’ve ever worked on—Chris and Mariska (Hargitay) are two of the funniest people, and you’d never know it from the show. There’s a sense of playfulness and fun, but then things get serious for shooting and everyone steps it up. There’s a lot of shtick going on.”
When he learned his character was to be killed off, Doyle remained sanguine. He knows showrunner Neal Baer from their days together at
ER
, and says, “He’s always been a big supporter of mine. He said, ‘Your character is getting killed. It’s not because I don’t like you or your character, but we’re making changes to the show and we wanted to make sure your character went out with a bang.’”
Grins Doyle, who’s used to having his characters die: “I’m not unfamiliar with the territory of death. On TV, that is.”
Joel de la Fuente (TARU Tech Ruben Morales, 2002−Present)

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