‘Law & Order’: Hugh Dancy on Price’s Heartbreaking Decision & Justin Chatwin’s Potential Return

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Law & Order Season 24 Episode 11 “The Hardest Thing.”]

The latest Law & Order is a tough one for Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), and the trial hits very close to home for him.

While prosecuting a woman (Katie Lowes, though she and Scandal costar Tony Goldwyn don’t share the screen at all) for murdering her father — it turns out he asked her to help him die by assisted suicide because he’d been diagnosed with Pick’s disease (frontal lobe dementia) — Nolan gets a visit from his brother, Thomas (Justin Chatwin) about their father. Nolan tries to push it off, but when his father can no longer swallow food due to his new meds, they must make a choice: give him a feeding tube (and a few more months) or manage his pain for the next 24-36 hours and make his passing as comfortable as possible. As his health proxy, it’s in Nolan’s hands, and while he’s leaning towards the former, Thomas argues for the latter and knowing it’s time to let him go. In the end, that’s what they do.

Below, Dancy opens up about this tough episode, seeing a different side of Nolan, and more.

The episode is just so heartbreaking. Talk about reading the script.

Hugh Dancy: There’s maybe a slight move within the show to try and find ways to stay within the structure that everybody’s familiar with, which is pretty much people at work, but find ways within that to crack it open a little more personally. And I thought that the writers did an excellent job of that. I think that Price is already a character who is fairly zipped up, so it made sense to me that he would have trouble just with this work-life overlap, and that resonated with me. I think we’ve all been in that position where we’re wrestling with something at home and then we’re going into work, and you’re trying not to let the two things bleed into each other. So I was excited.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

Talk about filming this episode because we do see a visibly affected Price and we’re not used to seeing that with him, like you said.

That’s obviously fun to get to play something different, and also just to expand the sense of who Price is and his family. So we had a little chat before we started. I spoke to the showrunner and the writer of the episode and also with Justin who played my brother, and suddenly we’re talking about who was this family, and where they’re from and what’s their background like. Oh, okay, this is four years in. This is all really helpful. I thought it was very well-written because it didn’t feel shoehorned in and the other thing I liked about it, which is true of the show in general I think, is that it didn’t take sides. You’ve got two brothers who have pretty radically different feelings about how best to take care of the father that they love, and I think they both have a point.

Talk about working with Justin on that brotherly dynamic, because we really get a sense of it just in a couple of scenes with them together.

Yeah, it was great. Justin came in for a few days. I mean, obviously, the nice thing in a way is that, unlike usual Law & Order stuff, all of our stuff was fairly heightened from the get-go, and he was really eager, I think, to jump right into that. Like I said, we had a very helpful conversation with the writers and with the director. So yeah, it felt like kind of a fun acting exercise popping up in the middle of our show.

When you were talking about information about his family, it made me think of the fact that their other brother’s briefly touched on this. There’s one line and the way Price looks at that photo, and just with that, it’s so easy to understand everything about it without having to do a bunch of exposition, which I really liked.

Oh, I’m really glad that you say that because I think that was the idea. It was something that three seasons ago, we did an episode about somebody who had died of an opioid overdose and culminating in this piece of information about Price that he’d lost a brother to that and that was that. And when we started talking about this, that’s really salient, that’s really relevant to whatever’s going on between these two brothers and probably their relationship with their father because anybody who has been through or knows anybody who’s been through that, losing somebody to addiction specifically, the collateral damage within a family is huge. So that’s one of the things we talked about. It didn’t need to be front and center by any means, but I’m really glad that it’s there as a kind of partial key to what’s going on between them.

Price really struggles with what to do about his father. What made him decide to let him go?

That’s a good question. First of all, I don’t think even at the end of the episode, he’s fully reconciled to it. I think he decides on that, but letting him go implies a kind of closure, and I don’t think he’s felt any closure. I think he feels pretty distraught. I mean, it’s pretty understandable. But I think he realizes that his dad is in such a dire place that at a certain point to keep him alive, you’re fighting maybe for yourself as much as you are for the person who’s dying.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

At the end of the episode, he turns his brother down for a meal or a drink and he says that he should get back to the office, but is he really going back to the office to throw himself into work? Does he just not want to go and be around his brother given that they were on different sides of it?

Yeah, I think he may well be going back to the office. I mean, in terms of the timeline of the episode, he goes back to the office and has that conversation with Baxter almost immediately after the night in which presumably he’s been sitting in a kind of vigil beside his father. So I do think of Price as somebody who probably buries a lot of — it’s not that he’s deeply repressed, but I think he just is one of those people who’s borderline workaholic. I mean, that’s one way to justify a character who we only ever see at work. That’s the nature of the show. But it kind of makes sense to me as somebody who channels all his own, whatever feelings he has, find an outlet through his work. So yeah, I think he probably was going back to the office, which is pretty sad.

But it’s probably also just easier for him to deal with work than to start the grief process.

Totally. Yeah, I think it’s a deflection. Everything that you said, it’s a deflection of his brother. Even though he gave in on that really important question, I don’t think that the conflict between them has been resolved. And I don’t think it’s one thing you might decide that something is right, but that doesn’t mean that your feelings on the matter necessarily changed. I haven’t seen the episode yet, but I know that when we played it, there was a sense in that last moment of walking out of the hospital room being now empty after packing up the father’s belongings, that Price was slightly haunted by that still. So yeah, he’s doing a runner, as they say.

Because things aren’t resolved with his brother, are we going to see Justin again this season?

I really hope so. The writers plot out these episodes and the shape of all of the episodes of the season pretty far in advance, and we’re at this point in filming relatively near the end. So I don’t know if it’ll happen this season, but knock on wood, if we come back, I would love that. Not just for Price, but honestly with all the characters, every time there’s a justifiable way to open up and crack a little bit of light into who they are and how that reflects on what they’re doing in the show, I’m in favor.

Speaking of plotting in advance, had you known that this was coming after the episode earlier, the season with Price visiting his dad?

No, I didn’t at the time. And then they mentioned it. It was like, wait, seriously? I thought the whole point of Law & Order was that one episode ends and then that’s it, and it’s as if it never happened. So I was really happy about that. That was another moment where you kind of realized at the end of that episode when Price visits his father’s hospital bed, that that’s what he’s been carrying along with him for the duration of the case in question for that episode. And you realize, again, that overlap of the stuff in your personal life that you’re carrying around, particularly when you’re thinking about how best to get justice for somebody, the fact that you’re going through a really painful experience yourself could easily affect it.

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How is Price doing going forward after this? Are we going to see it affecting him or is he just very much focused on work?

I think he’s focused on work and he’s the same person. I mean, as most of us are, especially with something, if you lose somebody that you’ve known for a while is dying, it doesn’t necessarily shift who you are or the way you behave, especially at work. So I think he’s the same person. The fact of having lost his brother previously comes up again later on in the season, as a side note almost, because it again throws light on the way he’s reacting to the case in question.

Price and Baxter clashed when Baxter first came in. How is Price feeling about working with him now?

I think he’s more reconciled, right? I mean, just in story terms, Baxter won his reelection at the end of last season. So he no longer necessarily has to play politics to the same degree. And I think Price’s suspicions of him on that level have calmed down a bit, but there’s still a bit of a clash. I think Price can be a bit high-minded or can be quick to feel that Baxter’s taking an easy way out or something like that. So I don’t know. It’s not completely copacetic.

Any specific clashes coming up that you can tease?

I’m kind of dodging a question, but one thing I liked about this episode was that last scene with Baxter, assuming it was not edited out, so you’ll have to tell me, but when he says, are you okay? And I’m like, yeah, it was a rough night. And I tell him that I changed my mind about the case. I’m assuming that that scene was still in the episode?

Yes, it is. He asked if it was a change of mind and you say, no, a change of heart.

Yeah, a change of heart, exactly. And what I had liked about that, and I think there’s been a bit more in this season, is that you also see Price and Baxter talking — I mean, clearly, he’s my boss and my superior — but just two human beings at work. So we’re as likely to be discussing something and teasing something out to try and make sense of it as we are to be going at each other. And I’m glad of that because you can only do that for so long before it’s going to get a bit tired.

But you needed the clash at the beginning to appreciate where they are now.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like I say, I think that that’s all there. So the moments when it’s a bit calmer, I think, are earned.

What else is coming up for Price?

The episode we’re about to start shooting is, I think, literally all I can say about it is extremely topical and goes right to the heart of the — if it’s a mission statement of being torn from the headlines, it’s that, and that’s true for all the characters. It’s not particularly a Price thing, but it’s a goodie.

Any crossovers with SVU or Organized Crime coming up?

I don’t think so. Like I said, we’re coming to the [end of filming]. I mean, relatively speaking, we’ve got a few more episodes left this season, so I don’t think so, but I would love to do that again down the line. Obviously, we had Mariska [Hargitay] with us near the beginning of this season, which was great for me. I loved going head-to-head with her as well. So the more of that, the merrier.

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