‘Law & Order: OC’: Tamara Tunie Talks Reunion With Christopher Meloni & Teases Stabler’s Vulnerability

Tamara Tunie is back in the Law & Order franchise this week with her guest spot on Organized Crime, reuniting her with Christopher Meloni (Detective Elliot Stabler) after 12 years.

Tunie debuted as medical examiner Melinda Warner in SVU Season 2 and became a series regular in Season 7. She exited in Season 12 (the last time Meloni appeared on SVU before the launch of the spinoff) but continued to make guest spots. She was last seen in SVU‘s 500th episode in 2021.

In the January 25 Organized Crime episode, “Deliver Us From Evil,” after a deadly bombing claims the life of a spiritual leader, Stabler meets with an officer who’s convinced the crime is part of a larger conspiracy. Tensions rise within the task force as Jet (Ainsley Seiger) struggles to get her team on board with Vargas’ (Tate Ellington) program. Plus, Stabler welcomes his older brother Randall (Dean Norris) to town.

Below, Tunie talks about her return and working with Meloni once again. Plus, get a peek at that reunion in the video above.

Welcome back to the world of Law & Order. I’m very glad to see you back.

Tamara Tunie: Thank you. It’s good to be back.

What can you preview about what brings Melinda back?

Well, apparently Warner has never left the morgue. She’s been lurking down there all this time. Stabler comes to her because she’s the genius and she always helps to solve the crime, and he’s looking particularly for an exact cause of death in this situation where there was an explosion and the person who was killed in the explosion, there’s a suspicion that the explosion actually wasn’t the cause of death and the explosion was to cover the cause of death. And so he comes to the morgue to see if Melinda can dig a little deeper and make more sense of what really happened.

But it turns out she digs a little deeper into him because you get that really emotional, sweet scene with the two of them, which I loved.

Yes, which is, I think, a really lovely scene. I can’t wait for the fans to see it because it’s a rare moment when we get to see Stabler’s vulnerability, and I think it’s really beautiful.

And I like that you can see how much she sees through him, too.

Absolutely. She knows something’s going on, and of course, they haven’t seen each other since the death of his wife. So there’s a lot under a lot of subtext, and there’s a lot under the dialogue that’s going on.

Eric Liebowitz / © NBC / courtesy everett collection

What does she see in him at this point? Because it has been a while. 

Yeah, I think she sees a different kind of Stabler coming in the room, and it’s like, “Oh, okay, let me kind of gauge what’s happening here. What’s going on? Who is this person who I haven’t seen in such a long time? A lot of life has happened. Let me see what’s happening here.” And so she’s kind of taking time, and then of course it’s back to business, and then by the end of the scene, it’s like, wow, okay, a real connection there and really, really appreciated and really meaningful.

Talk about working with Christopher again because it’s been about 12 years since we saw you two as these two characters onscreen together. (See the two in SVU Season 9 in the photo above.) 

Okay, first of all, I can’t even believe it’s been 12 years. That’s just crazy to me. But it was great. Chris and I are friends, so we see each other and we hang out, and I’m friends with his wife and children, so we see each other regularly. But it was great to be back on set together.

The last time we saw you before this was SVU’s 500th episode, and now it’s in its 25th season. What do you attribute to its success and longevity?

As I have always said, it’s the writing. It’s great writing on the shows, and the stories are always relevant. The stories are always relevant. So that, combined with a great cast and crew, it’s just a recipe for success, and Dick Wolf figured that out a long time ago. And it continues.

And it’s also so good about bringing back characters like you and the fact that we can see you across any of the shows.

Absolutely. And it’s so great to be able to move between the shows with the same character. That’s really fantastic.

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So, might we see you again somewhere in the world of Law & Order this season?

Well, you never know. So stay tuned.

When fans approach you about SVU, is there an episode they bring up more than any other?

I think it would be the episode where I get shot because they thought, oh no, they killed Tunie. But I didn’t die. [Laughs]

And because of that, we can see you again. Is there a Law & Order you’d want to show up on in the future?

I’m open to having Melinda show up whenever she’s needed, so I look forward to it.

Would you want to do more courtroom scenes? You are always so good in those.

I would love to do more courtroom scenes because I really love doing the courtroom scenes. Because in the courtroom scenes, even though I’m speaking [with] a lot of technical [terms] and doing a lot of explanation, it’s a bit of a conversation where somebody’s asking me a question, and I’m giving them the answer as opposed to just kind of in the morgue where it is almost like a monologue where I’m just saying, “This is this, this is this, this is this, this is this.” So, I do enjoy doing the courtroom scenes.

Law & Order: Organized Crime, Thursdays, 10/9c, NBC