‘Law & Order: SVU’: Peter Scanavino Talks ‘Glimmer of Hope’ in Final Rollisi Scene & Wake-up Call From Benson

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Law & Order: SVU Season 26 Episode 9 “First Light.”]

The good news: Carisi (Peter Scanavino) is going to be okay on Law & Order: SVU. The bad news: It’s not going to be easy for the lawyer to grapple with the aftermath of the hostage situation of the midseason finale.

In the midseason premiere, it’s clear he’s struggling; he’s having flashbacks to what happened. Benson (Mariska Hargitay) knows he’s lying when he says he’s good, and his wife, Rollins (Kelli Giddish), is happy to see him excited about something (working on the case). After he fails to follow up on the victim’s cross-examination in court, Benson gives him a wake-up call. By the end of the episode, there’s some hope, as he confirms to Rollins while they’re out with their kids that he’s going to be okay.

Below, Scanavino takes us inside this episode, including two important scenes with Benson and Rollins, and teases what’s ahead.

Nothing says how much this is affecting him than to see how shaken Carisi is in the courtroom after having those flashbacks. That was the beginning of the wake-up call for him, right?

Peter Scanavino: It was the unpredictability of it, that it just comes, and unfortunately in that courtroom scene, it happens in the middle of the victim being cross-examined and he’s kind of a bit out of it. So I think it’s clear, it’s undeniable that there’s an issue with him. And then I hope at the end of the episode when you see him with his family, that it’s just a glimmer of hope that he’s going to be able to get out of this personally but then also that he’s able to do his job and he’s able to kind of compartmentalize those two things. So I don’t think you’re going to see it affecting his job going forward, but in his own personal life, you might.

Scott Gries / NBC

Speaking of that last scene, it also feels like it’s the first time that Carisi can really breathe and relax in a while, there with his family.

Definitely. And I think with all the chaos of what’s been going on in the case, what he’s going through emotionally, just have this quiet moment and the simplicity of just having pizza with your kids and your wife and that you love all these people and how simple it is, but how fortunate you are to be able to do that, he gets to see [that] and things get put in perspective. And he feels grateful as opposed to what he’d been feeling up to that point, which was the anger that this had happened, almost anger at the world. And now he gets to kind of realize, oh, I have all this, that I do have love and joy in my life, and I will find it again.

It’s the simplicity of the moment, too, that he’s going to be okay. It’s not something big, but it’s what he needs.

Exactly. And I think we all know that it’s the simple things. It’s the simple pleasures in life, just the small little things where you feel safe, you feel hopeful, and they happen when you’re just having pizza with your family. Just little flashes.

There was also that great moment with Benson in the courtroom.

Oh, it’s just a great scene. I knew it was a big scene, that it would inform a lot of how Carisi’s doing. But I think it’s kind of been a theme that Carisi gets down and Benson comes and picks him up. And I feel like that showed the evolution of our relationship in some ways, that she was really coming with a tough love and I think you need to have the respectful relationship that they’ve cultivated over the years to have that scene so that he’ll actually be able to hear her and listen to her. It wasn’t necessarily, “It’s going to be okay, you’ll be great.” It was more of a wake up, wake up scene, which she literally says in the scene.

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And he needed that from Benson. He had moments with others in the episode, but it really needed to be from her.

Yeah, I mean, if it had been anybody else, he probably would’ve said, “Go kick rocks.” But the fact that it’s coming from her, I think, made him able to hear it.

What else is coming up for Carisi?

Some good courtroom stuff coming up. There’s one really good episode which deals with a kid in the foster care system, which I always thought those cases were really interesting. A lot of Benson and Carisi kind of working together. He’s going to be pretty intimately involved in a lot of the investigations, not just on the court side, but also the buildup to it, so kind of doing that hybrid detective lawyer thing he’s been doing from time to time.

With the Carisi and Benson scenes, is it more of her being there for him or the reverse, him there for her for something coming up?

There’s some conflict, I’m not going to lie. They get into some conflict. They have different views about the case, and I think they have this relationship where they can be very honest with each other. I think that leads to differences of opinion and they kind of boil over into arguments sometimes. But I think Benson has definitely always been there for Carisi, and I hope in the future episodes that I’m able to be there for her in the same way.

Law & Order: SVU, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC