Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9411080061 SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: ANDY MEISLER NEW YORK TIMES DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
And squeezed in among crew members and actors is Sam Waterston, who has just joined the cast in the central role of the Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy.
The scene at hand takes place in McCoy's cluttered, book-lined office. It is highlighted by Waterston rejecting, with a gaze of steel, a defense lawyer's plea-bargain proposal.
Act III, Scene 1 is performed repeatedly in the course of an hour. It is blocked, then rehearsed, then filmed again and again with the set relighted and the camera pointed at each of the actors in turn.
Between takes Waterston sits virtually motionless, oblivious to the hubbub around him. Although it is his privilege as the show's lead actor to have his ``coverage,'' or close-ups, filmed first, Waterston chooses to wait until last. ``He gets more rehearsal that way,'' said a staff member, admiringly.
Finally it is Waterston's turn. As McCoy, he looks at his opponent and says, for perhaps the 12th time, ``Now get out of my office.''
McCoy is bluffing, as ``Law and Order'' fans would know. Each Wednesday night at 10, a crime is committed, solved more or less by 10:30 by a team of New York City police detectives and handed over to the district attorney's office.
Waterston's scene is on page 26 of a 55-page script; at this point in the episode, the government prosecutors don't have enough evidence to convict anyone.
Likewise, Jack McCoy himself is an untested gambit. ``Law and Order'' viewers only last Wednesday had their first glimpse of Waterston, who was hired last spring.
He replaced Michael Moriarty, who played the monkish, ethical-to-a-fault prosecutor Ben Stone, and who quit the show after a set-to involving the producers and the attorney general of the United States, no less.
Waterston has good reason to be confident, though. His previous NBC series, ``I'll Fly Away,'' earned such critical acclaim that PBS bought the reruns.
In an acting career of more than two decades, he has played everyone from Abraham Lincoln (on the Lincoln Center stage last fall) to Nick Carraway (in the 1974 film ``The Great Gatsby'').
Further, he joins a show that has recently enjoyed good ratings along with the approval from reviewers it has had all along.
``I think it's a terrific show,'' the 53-year-old Waterston said of his new home. ``I think it's a fantastic luxury to be able to step into something ready-made.'' And ``Law and Order,'' perhaps better than most series, can absorb the shock of a major cast loss.
It already has done so: of the six actors who made up the regular cast when the show began in 1990, only two remain - Chris Noth and Steven Hill.
``It's a souffle,'' explained Dick Wolf, the show's creator and executive producer. ``You never know what's going to make the thing rise or what's going to make the thing fall. No producer in his right mind, if a show is working, wants to ever make a change. Ever. Because every time you do, you're playing Russian roulette. On the other hand, the show is strong enough in its construct that the play is the thing. It's like, wait a second. This should be possible. You know, how many people have played Hamlet?''
Wolf thinks the compartmentalized nature of ``Law and Order'' - 30 minutes with the police, 30 minutes with the prosecutors - keeps viewers from becoming too involved with any one character.
He also notes that his program is plot driven rather than character driven. That is, the show focuses almost exclusively on the characters' jobs rather than on their personal lives.
Moriarty's character, Ben Stone, was written out of the show at the end of last season, resigning in principled protest after his boss, the district attorney, refused to allow him to retry a case that had ended with a hung jury.
Wolf describes Stone's successor like this: ``Career prosecutor, divorced, 23-year-old daughter in law school. He's got strong opinions and he's a real optimist about his work and he loves the game of it."
``We have a very nice intro scene,'' the producer added. ``There are some questions asked and answered about what the working relationship is going to be, like for about one page, and then McCoy holds up a search warrant and says, `Can we get to work now?' And that's it.''
by CNB