‘Law & Order’: Tony Goldwyn on What Baxter Needs If He and Kate Were to Have a Future Together

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Law & Order Season 24 Episode 15 “Crossing Lines.”]

Uh-oh, Baxter’s (Tony Goldwyn) new relationship might be over soon after it started.

The latest Law & Order episode officially introduces Kate (Maggie Siff), the woman previously briefly mentioned as being in Baxter’s life. She’s a defense attorney, and she ends up facing off against Price (Hugh Dancy). (Baxter recuses himself because of their personal relationship.) Kate claims her client acted in self-defense when she killed the victim, who had threatened to ruin her if she didn’t kill an article chronicling his shortcomings ahead of a planned run for governor. She also intentionally misleads a witness about what could come up when he took the stand, so he recants. In the end, her client is found guilty of murder. Baxter tells Kate she did what she could, and she agrees before walking away.

Below, Goldwyn discusses Baxter’s relationship and its future, what’s ahead, and more.

This episode does not leave Baxter and Kate’s relationship in a good place. So what would you say their relationship is now? Do they have a future?

Tony Goldwyn: I think they could. I mean from a purely character point of view, I think Baxter really likes her a lot. Kate seems less inclined to give it a shot. It’s tough. I do believe that Baxter would be willing to, and I think they had really good chemistry, but having no idea what the writers are thinking, I think it’d be really interesting to explore. But it ends in a very difficult place at the end of this episode.

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So we’re not going to hear anything about it? Also Baxter probably is going to just be private about his private life again.

I don’t know. You know as much as I do on that. Maggie’s so great, I would love if she came back and we got a chance to explore that more. I feel like they’re good together. She’s a very competitive person and so is Baxter, so mixing work and pleasure is tough.

Yeah. It does seem that Baxter is more willing to keep the two as separate as possible and want to continue with relationship, but it’s hard to tell with Kate at the end of this episode, right?

That’s right, that’s right. Exactly, exactly. Baxter’s the DA, so he has more power in the situation and Kate does not like to lose and she’s not happy with him at this episode. I feel like he’s really trying to make it work. So I felt bad for him.

Did how Kate went about making her case and what she did with the witness change how Baxter feels about her at all or did he accept that?

He’s trying to be understanding about it. I think he really respects that Kate is so competitive and that she’s not willing to lose. At the same time, she’s pushing some ethical boundaries that he has problem with and it creates a trust issue for him. If we were to pursue the relationship, he would’ve to get that straightened out because I feel like she crossed a line and I think that’ll be problematic for him. But I think he’d certainly be willing to try and work it out.

So as supportive as he was of Kate taking on the case when she told him she was, how was the DA side of him feeling about it?

Well, good. I think that Baxter is happy for Kate in the sense that it’s a big case for her and I think he’s perfectly willing to have the best of the best defense attorneys on the opposite side of the table. That’s the way the system works best and he knows that Nolan’s a great prosecutor and let him go at it. Where it becomes difficult for him is when Kate starts to bend the rules a bit and, I think from Baxter’s point of view, take advantage of their relationship in an ethically dubious way. It creates real tension between them.

I have to say how much I like the Baxter and Price scenes in this episode. In general this season, we’re seeing just how far those two have come from what Baxter first was introduced. So how does Baxter feel about Price and Sam (Odelya Halevi) as his ADAs now as opposed to when he first came on?

I think they’re building a real relationship. What is great about it is it sort of toggles back and forth between being very tense and being quite friendly. I think that Baxter is learning to — he trusts Price where he wasn’t sure, I think, before whether he could trust Price. The thing about Nolan Price that’s very difficult for Baxter is Nolan is very kind of myopic in his pursuit of what he wants to do and that’s inconvenient for Baxter. Nolan pushes back and I think that Baxter would feel that Nolan doesn’t always look at the big picture, he just sees his point of view, and that’s great for when you’re the ADA, but when you are the DA, you have to look at the bigger picture. So they clash sometimes on that. But I think that Price has really earned Baxter’s respect and I would like to think that to some degree it’s true the opposite way — I’m not sure what Hugh would say about that — because we do still clash, but there seems to be a kind of grudging mutual respect there.

Virginia Sherwood/NBC

And there are nice moments like the moment at the end of the episode with Price’s father.

Yeah, I really like what Rick [Eid], our showrunner, is doing this year of integrating the personal storylines into the cases in a way that’s not gratuitous where you’re just tacking something on. I feel that way about Price and Baxter, also Brady and Baxter, with me and Maura [Tierney], you get the sense of a real relationship that exists between these two people and the sense of humor and that while still focusing on the case that we’re interested in, you get those other textures, which I think make the show a lot stronger.

What’s coming up for Baxter after this? Are we going to see you in the courtroom again anytime soon?

I don’t know. It would be interesting to, I’m hoping this year, but not that I know of yet. I think we’re just a couple episodes ahead of this one in terms of what we’re shooting, but that would be great. I was thinking about that yesterday, it would be nice to go back and do another scene where he decides to take on a case himself.

Baxter’s future was kind of left up at the end of last season with him continuing his campaign and then everything with his wife. What do you know about how this season is going to leave him?

No idea. Nope. And it’s fun to be surprised. At the beginning of the season I assumed that he was going through a separation, but I wasn’t sure. And so the episode before this one, we hear about Kate and so we were like, ‘Oh God, I better take off my wedding ring. I’m not with my wife anymore.’ So we always get surprised and that’s part of the fun of doing a series is you never know.

Law & Order, Thursdays, 8/7c, NBC

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