Chris Noth & Annabella Sciorra

[DNA]

zap2it.com

Noth Back to Maintaining 'Law & Order'
(Saturday, October 01 12:01 AM)
By Jay Bobbin

Although he hasn't done it in a while, Chris Noth is ready to uphold "Law & Order" again. After his "Sex and the City" run as Mr. Big, the actor is reprising his role from the earliest years of the New York-set NBC crime-drama franchise by joining the second spinoff series, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent."

He returned as Detective Mike Logan in the season premiere, and his first full episode airs Sunday, Oct. 2, with Annabella Sciorra as new partner Carolyn Barek. They'll alternate with the existing "Criminal Intent" duo, Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe as investigators Robert Goren and Alexandra Eames.

Last season, Noth guest-starred on the show while D'Onofrio reported medical problems. If the new split between them is seen as a solution, Noth doesn't dismiss that. "Let me be honest," he says, "I could never do a series the way Vince has done this for four years. He's been carrying an hour every week, and it's too grueling. I'm not 29 anymore, so what we're doing here is giving each other a break. It's a very civilized way to do a series."

After leaving the original "Law & Order" in 1995, Noth brought Logan back in the 1998 TV movie "Exiled," for which he helped devise the story. He says the film "provided a lot more room to explore the character than a series does. An odd thing happened, and it's called 'creative freedom.' It's usually very tightly controlled at 'Law & Order,' so the movie was a lot of fun for me."

Noth admits bringing Logan back weekly is a different story. "I had to think about it long and hard," he says. "I still think about it. When I first did 'Law & Order,' it was the most innovative cop drama around. Now you've got 10 shows on the air that have the same style. Everybody sort of acts the same, and I think that's wrong. At the time we did it, it was the new game in town. No one had explored what it was like to get inside a New York detective's head in solving a crime or getting a criminal, without going into his personal life. Now it's old-hat."

Adding something fresh is the dilemma for Noth, "and I don't know if I've solved it. Vince has established [Goren] as a sort of super-detective, a modern Sherlock Holmes, and Logan is emphatically not that. I think that with Annabella Sciorra's character, he's getting back to what you saw in the first five years of 'Law & Order.' They're also slowly filling in the details of who Logan is 10 years later."

If viewers expect echoes of Mr. Big, they may be in for a letdown. Despite his added fame as Carrie's (Sarah Jessica Parker) on-and-off suitor on "Sex and the City," Noth claims such a strong identification is "troublesome to me as an actor. It's just a part. If people want to pretend that's the real you when you're walking down the street or doing anything else, there's nothing I can do about that. 'Sex and the City' was such a huge event, it's mind-blowing how it stuck in people's consciousness. They've come at me in various ways about that character, which really startles me."

As he gets back into the "Law & Order" world, Noth vows to be vigilant about the quality level for which the franchise has long been known. "So many other franchises mimic it," he says, "and I think that's the problem with TV today. Good stuff gets mimicked by mediocre stuff, and the audience sees it all as the same. You wonder if anyone notices the distinction. And that's a little scary."



canoe.com

Please, no more Sex for Chris Noth
Mr. Big wants to move on to something new like, say, Law & Order
By BILL HARRIS - Toronto Sun

Mr. Big is buried, but Detective Mike Logan is very much alive. Welcome to the spiritual world of actor Chris Noth.

Tomorrow Noth will reprise his old Law & Order role of Mike Logan when he joins the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The show will air at 7 p.m. on CTV -- strangely early for such a grisly drama, don't you think? -- and at 9 p.m. on NBC.

In recent years, however, Noth got in touch with his sensitive side as Sarah Jessica Parker's main love interest, Mr. Big, on Sex And The City

"Big is dead!" Noth shouted good-naturedly in response to a Sex And The City question during a conference call on Thursday.

"In the movie, he died. They didn't make the movie, but he had a heart attack and died."

Condolences, Carrie!

Now, in the absence of a Sex And The City movie that was planned but never got off the ground, the world has managed to soldier on. But apparently that's more than we can say for poor Mr. Big.

The resilience of Det. Logan is a different matter.

Noth will be partnered with Annabella Sciorra in half of the Law & Order: CI episodes this season. Alternating episodes will feature incumbents Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe. Occasionally there will be a special two-hour episode in which all four stars appear together (the first of those is set to air in November), but otherwise it will be a half-and-half proposition.

You'll remember Sciorra, by the way, as the crazy car saleswoman who had a stormy romantic relationship with Tony (does he have any other kind?) on The Sopranos.

Anyway, since Noth acrimoniously parted ways with Law & Order in 1995 after five seasons, he has not been shy about expressing his frustration with the format.

So why would Noth agree to return to something he had come to loathe?

"Dick Wolf made me an offer I couldn't refuse," said Noth with a laugh, referring to the creative force behind the three Law & Order franchises.

"It's a different format, the procedure format. The stories on Law & Order are like Sherman's march to Atlanta. Actors have been B***hing about that since Law & Order began. The danger comes when you try to force character into it, to get attention, where maybe it's not warranted. It's hard for me to even look at the first six episodes of Law & Order I did back in 1990. You see a young actor desperately trying to say, 'I'm a character.'

"But look, it's a great gig. I've been doing lots of stuff outside it, but it's not like there's just amazing material everywhere around you."

Clearly Noth missed the series debut of The Ghost Whisperer.

But seriously, he's right. And even when you're part of a well-regarded and popular show, it can get on your nerves.

"Although Sex And The City was a great show and I loved that for what it was, the response to it became so much more than the show," Noth said. "That became, in a sense, annoying. So it was great to go back to something I knew, but I could explore more, recreate, bring more nuance."

Noth could have benefitted from some nuance when he was asked a tongue-in-cheek question about Det. Logan possibly interviewing Mr. Big as a suspect for some crime.

"Probably as a serial rapist," Noth said.

That prompted some nervous laughter from Sciorra, who also was on the conference call.

But Noth, who has the reputation of being something of a loose cannon, didn't stop there. "No, there's absolutely no chance," he said. "There's about as much chance as we're going to win the Iraq war."

You practically could hear the eyes of NBC publicists going wide.

His verbal volatility notwithstanding, Noth has become one of the most recognizable faces on television, be it as Det. Logan, Mr. Big, or Det. Logan again.

Noth ventured into the world of fashion to describe the order in which he has portrayed his two most famous characters:

"It's like going from Moe Ginsburg, to Gucci, back to Moe Ginsburg."

And he takes a bite out of the Big Apple

Chris Noth is no fan of the spiffy, new New York.

"The city reflects the world of Sex And The City more than the old Law & Order," said Noth, the Law & Order and Sex And The City alumnus who has joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

"At least Manhattan, in terms of danger and eccentricity, is much more of a theme park now. You couldn't really shoot the old Law & Order in New York today. It's a different city."

Not that New York has become crime-free or anything. But the outspoken Noth is alarmed by the homogenization.

"I don't think they should have thrown out the baby with the bath water," Noth said. "Some of this is great. I ride the subways and it's great that they're safe. But what have we become? I like the fact we're safer, but that doesn't mean we have to become a mall, does it?

"It's terrible. We're starting to look like Hong Kong, or Singapore at worst. Pretty soon you won't be able to throw a piece of gum on the street."

So is there any chance of the old New York coming back?

"Maybe in 20 years, when Disney rots and looks like sort of a pornographic version," Noth said.

"It's not that I'm asking for that, and I don't know how to explain it. I just think there's room for the disenfranchised. I don't think we have to sweep it under the rug."



canoe.com

Sciorra lawyers up TV question
By BILL HARRIS - Toronto Sun

This really isn't the best way to promote your new TV show. Annabella Sciorra, who has joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, was asked the other day about the proliferation of procedural cop dramas. With three Law & Orders, three CSIs and several other copycats, is there a danger the writers could run out of crimes?

"I don't have a television, so I don't know what they do," Sciorra said.

Sheesh, it's like an elected politician admitting total ignorance as to what actually is going on in his or her constituency. Oh, wait ... bad example.
Anyway, Sciorra may not watch TV, but she has been on TV before. She received an Emmy nomination for her role as an unstable car saleswoman on The Sopranos.
Perhaps after hanging around so many criminals, Sciorra felt the need to hang around some cops to balance her inner moral scale. But she admitted she still doesn't quite have a handle on her new character yet.
"Unlike a movie, you kind of learn things about yourself every week," Sciorra said. "When you get a new script, you find out, oh, I was with the FBI, or oh, my father was this, or oh, this is where I grew up. They can make it up as they go along."

As long as they don't run out of crimes. Not that Sciorra would know anything about it.

[joanie]

dna said:

zap2it.com


This really isn't the best way to promote your new TV show. Annabella Sciorra, who has joined the cast of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, was asked the other day about the proliferation of procedural cop dramas. With three Law & Orders, three CSIs and several other copycats, is there a danger the writers could run out of crimes?

"I don't have a television, so I don't know what they do," Sciorra said.

Annabella Sciorra seems as disinterested in the show as her character was toward the case.

North is going to have work hard to find a way for this on screen partnership to be even remotely interesting.

[DNA]

nbc screening room has interviews with both Sciorra and Noth.

I can never work out the direct links for the videos on the nbc site so...click primetime and scroll down to LOCI and voila...

[LOCIfan]

Wow. Joanie, I'm with you. I think this "interview" with Sciorra is very telling. She seems not only disinterested, but also sort of unprepared.

In the interview Stephanie SenGupta gave us last spring, she talked about the fact that the writers have character bibles for each of the characters, and even responded to a question concerning whether or not Goren had been physically abused as a child (she said he had been). It was pretty clear from her response that Mr. D'Onofrio was made aware of the contents of Goren's character bible. In fact, it's clear that he knows and uses the backstory created for his character in each and every one of his performances -- so that while various tidbits about his history may leak out slowly to the audience, they aren't a surprise to the actor who's portraying the character.

I find it difficult to believe that such a character bible doesn't exist for Detective Barek. Or that it hasn't been given to Ms. Sciorra to read/ comment on/use in her performance... But this interview suggests that Ms. Sciorra hasn't given it much thought at all.

If it truly is a surprise to the actress that her character was in the FBI, or that her father was this or that -- then it's no wonder that her performance comes off as flat and disinterested. In order for her to portray a full-blooded, well-rounded character, she needs to have some inkling of who that character is.

Very strange -- especially since I thought all actors loved the idea of sinking their teeth into a well-developed character. Maybe there's something I'm missing here.

I hope Ms. Sciorra decides to read the bible for Barek soon and plugs in to her character because, knowing these writers, I'll bet Barek's got a lot of interesting nooks and crannies.

[LOCIfan]

DNA, my computer can't handle video -- but I'm curious if you watched the Sciorra interview, and whether or not she offered any insight into her take on the Barek character...

[DNA]

She thinks VDO and Kate Erbe have created intricate characters which is quite unusual in a procedural drama, she hope's she can do the same, but the show is not character driven, working in television you never know until you get the next script what direction the character is going to take. She gives a bit of basic background on Barek saying she grew up in Brooklyn worked for NYPD, worked for the FBI (didn't like it) and then came back to the NYPD. And she approaches the role as a person, as herself and not as a person pretending to be a cop.

In her defence (because I do like her as an actress) I think in a nutshell she's finding her feet, her and Noth know that this show belongs to VDO and Erbe and they are going to have to work hard to make people interested, her even more so than Noth because to some extent we already know his character. That interview I posted from canoe where she says she doesn't have a TV, should be taken with a journalistic pinch of salt, when I read that I thought it was a polite way for her to say she doesn't watch those other shows either that or she didn't want to get into another CSI v L&O pissing match.

[LOCIfan]

dna said:

She thinks VDO and Kate Erbe have created intricate characters which is quite unusual in a procedural drama, she hope's she can do the same, but the show is not character driven, working in television you never know until you get the next script what direction the character is going to take. She gives a bit of basic background on Barek saying she grew up in Brooklyn worked for NYPD, worked for the FBI (didn't like it) and then came back to the NYPD. And she approaches the role as a person, as herself and not as a person pretending to be a cop.

Thanks for the recap, DNA. That clarifies things a little. It's true that she might not know from week to week what's going to be revealed about the character, but it seems as though she's privvy to the character bible, her character's backstory, etc... I just got the impression from Ms. SenGupta's interview that the writers got pretty detailed about the characters and their past histories, so I tend to imagine they've done the same thing with Barek.

[LOCIfan]

dna said:

In her defence (because I do like her as an actress) I think in a nutshell she's finding her feet, her and Noth know that this show belongs to VDO and Erbe and they are going to have to work hard to make people interested, her even more so than Noth because to some extent we already know his character. That interview I posted from canoe where she says she doesn't have a TV, should be taken with a journalistic pinch of salt, when I read that I thought it was a polite way for her to say she doesn't watch those other shows either that or she didn't want to get into another CSI v L&O pissing match.

I've also enjoyed Sciorra in other roles -- thought she was terrific in The Sopranos, and I can see how this would be a daunting undertaking. Not only because she's the newest of the new kids on the block, but because she's never worked on a series before where she's had to develop and sustain a character over several (hopefully!) seasons. The Sopranos stint was only three or four eps. I'm willing to give her a chance and hope she grows into the role. And, yeah, her comment about not having a TV seemed a judicious way to sidestep a loaded question.