At some point in time, many television shows, regardless of genre, deal with the one inevitable fact of life: death. Losing characters we love is particularly tricky for fans, but we can pretty much all be assured that, year after year, we’ll get character deaths that’ll break our hearts for years, along with numerous characters killed off in spectacular ways. Well, the 2025 TV schedule has also delivered some tragedy to characters recently, with Law & Order: Organized Crime killing off a beleaguered but important part of the drama. Now, Christopher Meloni has opened up about why such things make him “sad” in real life.
What Did Organized Crime’s Christopher Meloni Say About Being Sad Over Character Deaths?
While you’d be hard pressed to find a long-running TV series that doesn’t kill off at least a couple of characters over time, some shows are more death-prone than others. That includes criminal procedurals like Law & Order: Organized Crime, where characters we grow to love are constantly in the crosshairs of (seemingly innumerable) dangerous criminals. While a Season 5 episode flirted with the death of a popular, long-running character, it pulled the trigger (literally) with another. Star Christopher Meloni opened up to TV Insider about how he feels as an actor when that happens, and said:
I’m always legitimately sad when someone I know as a character dies. As a friend and actor, it’s someone who lost a job. At the same time, to play those emotions was very, it was distressing. Any time you can go into dark, messy, complicated emotional spaces, that’s why we signed up for the job underneath it all. The chance of, can you pull it off? Where are you going with it? How are you going to do it? What is it you’re doing to explore those emotions? That’s what makes it fun and challenging.
On one hand, I completely get Meloni wanting to show off his ability to bring audiences the “dark, messy, complicated emotional spaces” caused by the death of a character who’s been close to Elliot Stabler. As noted, this is a part of life that will likely be handled by every series at some point, and it gives actors some interesting work to do and ways to stretch themselves creatively. On the other, well, as he noted, someone you’ve worked with has now lost a job, and here is where I will get into Organized Crime Season 5 SPOILERS, so back out now if you don’t wanna know who died!
Season 5, Episode 9 was especially tough for the Stabler family. While family matriarch Bernie was about to be released from the hospital, Elliot had to run off and attempt to save his incredibly messy baby brother/criminal/organized crime informant Joe Jr. from Big Bad Julian Emery. Unfortunately, Julian was already well aware that Joe was a police informant and giving up info about his organization, and after calling Elliot to tell him to call off the search for him and Joe, he shot Jr., who eventually died in Elliot’s arms.
Phew!
END SPOILERS
I’d imagine that actors love digging into a meaty scene like this, but it does have to suck to lose a co-worker/friend. Elliot might be in a very dark place now, and we can see what happens next when the finale airs on Thursday, June 12.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
