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Detective Amanda Rollins may have left Law & Order: SVU for good, but Sergeant Amanda Rollins is here to stay.
Kelli Giddish isn’t back on the NBC drama full-time just yet, but she is back for multiple episodes this season in a whole new capacity. Sergeant Rollins made her debut in the latest episode of SVU as an SVU case collided with an Intelligence case, reuniting her with what’s left of her old team. Most importantly, she reunited with Benson (Mariska Hargitay), who got to see her BFF hard at work in a whole new way. Giddish promised their friendship hasn’t changed despite Rollins’ new role, but the actors did have some adjusting to do.
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“We just had to go back in the script sometimes because both of us, all of us, were saying Detective Rollins,” she told Parade. “And we’re like, ‘Ugh, she’s a sergeant now, can we go back?’ Okay, this is Sergeant Rollins. It’s just hard to remember! That’s all it is.”
In the episode, Rollins described her new job “like eavesdropping on the whole world.” Her team had been tracking a group of thieves who fly into a place, commit some high-end robberies, then fly back within 48 hours, and they had intel that they were coming to Manhattan next. When one of the thieves went rogue and raped one of the robbery victims, Benson and her team were called in as well. Together, they tracked down a gang desperately trying to rid themselves of the rapist, and Benson and Rollins chased the guy down in a crowded bar in a scene that Giddish particularly loved.
“Me and Mariska had this huge chase scene, and it was just so fun to be thrown into that,” she says. “It’s not just sitting in the squad room trying to figure it out. It’s like, we’re running and we’re climbing and we’re working together as these two women. It was so much fun to film, and we were so energized. I was like, ‘God dang it lady, you have a lot of energy. I want to be you when I’m 60.’ She loves her job, and I think it invigorates both of us to be together and to be able to act together.”
Read on to find out more about Giddish’s return on SVU, and Rollins’ new job. New episodes of Law & Order: SVU air Thursdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
Related: Everything to Know About Law & Order: SVU Season 26
How does it feel to be back on SVU in this new way?
It’s great. I’m honored. I’m always honored to be invited back. It’s very comfortable there. It’s a family I was with for years and years, and I’m missing my crew there. I’m missing the cast and catching up and seeing how everybody’s families are doing. It’s a little bit of that, and when I stopped working there on a regular basis, the one thing I [realized was] I laughed a lot. I was at home one day, and I was like, “Oh my god, I haven’t laughed today.” We laughed all the time at work. It was a really nice kind of warm realization to make that even when the material is so heavy, we’re such a family and so comfortable with each other. It’s always a joy to be there.
It’s interesting and nice that you can laugh so much when you’re dealing with such horrible stuff.
I think it’s gallows humor. And with the people that are actually in these positions, from my conversations with them, it’s a little bit of the same. Peter Scanavino made me cry yesterday on set. I’m doing another episode right now and we were dealing with a really heavy scene, and I was like, “Wait, I’m not supposed to be crying.” So it’s not only laughing. We deeply, deeply feel each other, you know what I mean? And that’s something you can do when you spend 12 to 14 hours a day with people, day in and day out.
What’s it like coming back into the fold in a different position?
It’s fun. Rollins is now a sergeant with the NYPD Intelligence bureau, so a little promotion, a different badge. It was fun to see how that felt different, if it felt different. You see her at the beginning giving a briefing to the NYPD brass about these crime tourists. When [showrunner] David Graziano was pitching this idea, he was telling me about crime tourism, and I was like, “What the hell are you talking about?” It’s a real thing! These people fly, they do a robbery, and they’re on a plane 48 hours later. So it was a lot of fun to know that Rollins has all this information from global sources. It’s a different kind of calculation to catch the bad guys. It’s just a different arena, a different tact, a different approach. And to see Benson and Rollins for the first time not having the same objective, which is to protect the survivor. Of course Rollins will always protect the survivor, but there’s new light in her eyes and a focus on getting these bad guys who are leaving this bloody trail of horribleness.
Related: New Law & Order: SVU Star Juliana Aidén Martinez Shares First Impression of ‘Formidable’ Mariska Hargitay
Benson and Rollins had a kind of tough conversation last season about how SVU can’t be Rollins’ safety net. Do you think this job is what she needed?
I do. I don’t think it turns out that teaching was an exact fit for her. She needs to be more involved in the process of getting the bad guys instead of just teaching people how to do it. Now that she has a stable, healthy relationship with Carisi, she’s able to make these choices. She has somebody to catch her when she falls, and it’s not SVU, and it’s not her job. It’s something bigger than that. Now that she’s more stable and has an even bigger family, she can take more risks. There’s a foundation there.
We haven’t actually seen Rollins start her new job before this episode, so how do you imagine she’s doing and how she’s adjusted?
I think she’s fascinated by it, just like when I was hearing the real stories of the real people who do these jobs. As she tells Benson, it’s like eavesdropping on the whole world. I think she got thrown into it, and she was like, “Give it to me! All of it!” The singular focus that Rollins has always had that has sometimes led her to some pretty bad places is really used to her advantage in this job. That’s fun to play with.
SVU tends to get so personal so often because of the nature of the crimes, but Intelligence seems a little more broad. Do you feel that, and does it change how Rollins works?
That’s interesting. I think the nature of Rollins is that anything is going to become personal. This case is in her city. She’s hearing that they’re going to come take advantage of it, and she takes great offense to that, knowing that there’s a way to stop them. I think she can’t sleep at night knowing that if there’s a way, then it’s personal to her that they need to be stopped.
Does that work well in Intelligence, how personally she takes things?
Yeah. I mean, I think we all know those people. Sometimes it gets them into trouble, but it also makes them really, really good at their jobs.
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