Latest news with #LawAndOrder
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
After Another Major Law And Order Casting Shakeup, I'm Flashing Back To The Guest Star Who Said He'd 'Love' To Partner With Reid Scott Again
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Law & Order is still months away in the 2025 TV schedule from premiering the milestone 25th season, but not all of the Season 24 series regulars will be back. The drama is continuing its trend of losing stars over summer hiatuses without getting a proper goodbye in the previous finale, with another regular exiting. While Odelya Halevi might have seemed most likely to leave after Maroun was very heavily implied to have shot the man who murdered her sister, another one of the detectives is out: Mehcad Brooks as Jalen Shaw. The news of Brooks' exit reminded me of my conversation with a Law & Order guest star who was very interested in reprising his NYPD role back in the spring, but first things first! Mehcad Brooks Is Leaving Law & Order Mehcad Brooks is not returning to Law & Order to reprise his series regular role as Detective Jalen Show in Season 25, according to Deadline. The decision reportedly has nothing to do with any bad blood, but a mutual call with the Supergirl alum exploring post-Law & Order opportunities. The rest of the cast is set to return, with Tony Goldwyn and Reid Scott renewing their contracts following Season 24 and Hugh Dancy, Odelya Halevi, and Maura Tierney on board. Brooks leaving also means that Law & Order is continuing the trend of losing one series regular between each one of the revival seasons so far. Anthony Anderson left after Season 21 as Detective Kevin Bernard, followed by Jeffrey Donovan after Season 22 as Detective Frank Cosgrove. The exit after Season 23 was one my personal favorites: Camryn Manheim as Lieutenant Kate Dixon. The aftermath of Season 24 was evidently the time for Brooks – who filled Anderson's shoes when he arrived in Season 22 – to bow out as Jalen Shaw. A replacement partner for Reid Scott's Detective Vincent Riley hasn't been cast yet, but I think I know of an actor who would be game to have a more prominent role on the NBC drama if he has the chance. Jesse Metcalfe Would "Love" To Return In a casting twist of fate, Desperate Housewives vet Jesse Metcalfe happened to guest star on Law & Order as Sergeant Danny DeLuca in an episode that didn't feature Mehcad Brooks' Jalen Shaw, so his scenes in his Season 24 episode were largely with Reid Scott as Detective Riley and/or Maura Tierney as Lieutenant Brady. When I spoke with Metcalfe ahead of his March episode, he shared that he would "love to see the character of Sergeant Danny DeLuca expanded" and "Maybe he could end up becoming a detective." Having seen the episode, I asked Metcalfe what it was like for him to team up with Reid Scott to film an action-packed episode across Manhattan, and he shared: It couldn't have been a better experience working with Reid. He was just so warm and welcoming and supportive. And I think he that he's a great actor, and a lot of people commented on set, including several of the producers, that we sort of had an instant rapport. And I think people are going to really see that on screen. The chemistry was great. The episode, called "Folk Hero" and available streaming with a Peacock subscription now, had a "ripped from the headlines" style of story with an insurance CEO as the victim of the week and the citizens of New York deliberately getting in the cops' way of tracking the killer down. Riley and DeLuca were ultimately successful and the case was handed over to the legal team of DA Nick Baxter (Tony Goldwyn), ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), and ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi). So, would Jesse Metcalfe be interested in working with Reid Scott and the rest of the cast again if given the shot despite a slightly embarrassing moment while filming? He didn't need even a moment to think when he answered my question, saying: Absolutely. I would love to reprise this role, and if given the opportunity, build out the character even more. In a fun twist, Jesse Metcalfe was already only a couple degrees of separation from Law & Order even before he arrived as a guest star, going back to the days on a short-lived drama elsewhere on the network. He shared: I'm definitely a fan of the original show, and all of the spinoffs as well… I have worked with Kelli Giddish, who was on Law and Order: SVU. We were on a short-lived procedural drama on NBC called Chase, about U.S. Marshals, so I would tune in to see some of her work from time to time. I'm just thrilled to be a part of such a storied franchise with a tradition of exceptional guest stars. And I really feel like Law & Order has one of the most talented and accomplished ensemble casts on television, so this is an incredible opportunity for me. If you're not familiar with NBC's Chase, that's not too surprising! The procedural starred future TV powerhouses like Kelli Giddish in her pre-Law & Order: SVU days and Cole Hauser years before Yellowstone, but only ran for a grand total of 18 episodes over one season from 2010-2011. Giddish actually is returning to SVU as a series regular in the fall for the 2025-2026 TV schedule; could Metcalfe return to primetime for Law & Order as well? All we can say for sure is that he enjoyed his experience as a guest star and would be very happy to return as Sergeant Danny DeLuca. I'm not sure how it would work for a Sergeant to partner with a Detective, but if I've been willing to overlook NYPD ranks when it comes to SVU with Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Fin (Ice-T), and Curry (Aimé Donna Kelly), it'd only be fair if I did the same for Law & Order. Law & Order returns without Mehcad Brooks as a series regular this fall, and I'm already wondering if NBC will go big to celebrate the milestone of Season 25. I wouldn't count on NBC transforming Rockefeller Plaza in NYC like the celebration for SVU hitting 25 seasons, because Law & Order doesn't have a star like Mariska Hargitay who has been on board from the very beginning. For now, you can find both Law & Order and SVU streaming on Peacock. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Law & Order' Announces Shocking Cast Departure Ahead of Season 25
'Law & Order' Announces Shocking Cast Departure Ahead of Season 25 originally appeared on Parade. Law & Order is going through yet another shakeup. Ahead of its 25th season, the NBC drama is losing a lead detective as Mehcad Brooks, who plays Jalen Shaw, won't be returning. Deadline was the first to share the news, and reported that other cast members Reid Scott, Hugh Dancy, Tony Goldwyn, Maura Tierney and Odelya Halevi will be back when the show returns this fall. Of course, this kind of change is fairly familiar to the franchise, as cast members regularly come and go. But that doesn't mean it's not hard to say goodbye. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Brooks joined the series in Season 22 after the departure of Anthony Anderson, who was one of the few cast members from the show's original run to stick around for its revival. Shaw was partnered with Senior Detective Frank Cosgrove (Jeffry Donovan) until his departure at the end of Season 22, and Cosgrove was replaced with Detective Vincent Riley (Scott) in Season 23. Riley will now likely get a promotion and a new partner in Season 25. While Dancy and Halevi have been part of the show since it was revived, Goldwyn and Tierney are both recent additions. Goldwyn replaced longtime Law & Order star Sam Waterston when he retired from playing DA Jack McCoy in Season 23, and Tierney replaced Camryn Manheim as the lieutenant in Season 24. Related: d as Beloved Cast Member Gets Major Promotion Season 24 ended on a cliffhanger that actually suggested it was ADA Maroun (Halevi) who might not return. The identity of her sister's killer was finally uncovered, but the suspect was only connected to that murder via inadmissible DNA evidence uncovered through a private database. It caused a rift and a huge debate among the cops and the prosecution team, and everyone had different arguments about how to approach a case where the most significant evidence is ironclad, but unusable. Shaw and Riley were troubled by Brady (Tierney) and her decision to use the database, and Maroun struggled to see the case from a legal perspective. When the murderer turned up dead, Price (Dancy) was worried she had gone off the deep end. It doesn't seem likely that she'd kill a person, but at the very least, Maroun and Price were both deeply affected by the situation. While Brooks may not be back on Law & Order, he'll be back on screen in a major way thanks to Mortal Kombat II. He played Jax in Mortal Kombat, the 2021 film adaptation of the video game, and he returns in the sequel, which is scheduled to release on Oct. 24, 2025. He is also recurring on Season 3 of the Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That as Marion Odin.'Law & Order' Announces Shocking Cast Departure Ahead of Season 25 first appeared on Parade on Jul 19, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 19, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mehcad Brooks leaves 'Law & Order', won't appear on season 25
Detective Jalen Shaw is handing in his badge. The actor who plays him, Mehcad Brooks, is leaving Law & Order after three seasons on the long-running cop show, Entertainment Weekly can confirm. Brooks will not be in the show's upcoming 25th season. According to Deadline, which first reported the news on Friday, the parting of ways was mutual, and Brooks is already pursuing other projects. The actor has not yet addressed the news on his social media accounts. It's understood that the rest of the Law & Order task force — Tony Goldwyn, Reid Scott, Hugh Dancy, Odelya Halevi, and Maura Tierney — are set to return for the new season, however. The season 24 finale offered no hints at an exit for Shaw, and Brooks didn't allude to it in a wrap message shared on his Instagram in April. In it, he wrote, "That's a wrap on Season 24. What an amazing, intense, and deeply grounding experience. It's a pleasure and privilege to share the screen with such talented and hardworking artists and such an intrepid crew who truly care about what we are co-creating." Brooks first joined the show in 2022, following Anthony Anderson's departure. Shaw was partnered up with Scott's Detective Vincent Riley. The casting for a new potential partner is underway, but Brooks previously opened up about his relationship with his onscreen buddy. "Reid is my brother from another mother, like we were long-lost brothers split up at birth," Brooks told CinemaBlend in October 2024. "I don't know what happened, but I've never gotten along so well with somebody so fast, and he says the same thing." Brooks continued, "We have the same sense of humor, both really sarcastic and sardonic. We have a lot of similar interests. We're both Scorpios. We just get along as human beings, and we both work really hard at our jobs." Aside from Law & Order, Brooks was most recently seen in the ongoing third season of HBO Max's And Just Like That. In it, Brooks plays Marion, a film producer hired by Lisa Todd Wexley (played by Nicole Ari Parker). The very married documentarian confesses to Charlotte (Kristin Davis) that she has a "work crush" on Marion and has even had a sexy dream about him. He's also set to reprise his role as Jax in New Line's Mortal Kombat II in October. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Law & Order's Mechad Brooks Leaving Ahead of Season 25
Det. Jalen Shaw has turned in his gun and his badge for good. Mechad Brooks is leaving Law & Order ahead of its upcoming Season 25, TVLine has confirmed. Our sister site Deadline first reported Brooks' departure, noting that the parting was mutual between the actor and the production. More from TVLine Tracker Twist: 2 Series Regulars Out Ahead of Season 3 (Exclusive) Casting News: Friday the 13th Prequel Casts Young Jason, an SVU Promotion and More Chicago Fire Casting Shake-Up: Michael Bradway Not Returning for Season 14 as Jack Damon TVLine has reached out to Brooks for comment. Fall TV Schedule Grid 2025: What's on When? And Versus What? View List Brooks joined the NBC procedural in 2022, after Anthony Anderson left the series. Law & Order will cast another detective in Brooks' absence, and the rest of the cast — Hugh Dancy, Maura Tierney, Odelya Halevi, Reid Scott and Tony Goldwyn — will return for the upcoming season. Brooks currently appears as Marion Odin on HBO Max's And Just Like That… His past credits include Supergirl, Necessary Roughness, Dollhouse, The Game, Desperate Housewives and True Blood. When Law & Order returns for Season 25, it will retain its Thursdays-at-8/7c time slot, leading into Law & Order: SVU at 9 and new drama The Hunting Party at 10. In other Law & Orderverse casting news, Aimé Donna Kelly, who plays Law & Order: SVU's Capt. Renee Curry, recently was promoted to series regular for that show's forthcoming Season 27. Will you miss Det. Shaw around the precinct? Hit the comments with your thoughts! Best of TVLine 'Missing' Shows, Found! Get the Latest on Ahsoka, Monarch, P-Valley, Sugar, Anansi Boys and 25+ Others Yellowjackets Mysteries: An Up-to-Date List of the Series' Biggest Questions (and Answers?) The Emmys' Most Memorable Moments: Laughter, Tears, Historical Wins, 'The Big One' and More
Telegraph
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The dark secrets Jayne Mansfield took to her grave
Jayne Mansfield's death, on June 29 1967, was subject to as much wilfully inaccurate reporting as her life had been. For decades, the rumour circulated that this 34-year-old blonde bombshell – one of Hollywood's favourite post-war pin-ups – had been decapitated when the sedan she was in slammed into the back of a truck, just outside New Orleans. According to none other than her undertaker, one Jim Roberts, this was hogwash. The impact of the collision, which flung the car's engine into the front seat and killed two other adults and a dog, also caused Mansfield's wig to be thrown to the side of the road. It's this that was mistaken in news stories for her head, a myth morbidly perpetuated for years, including by JG Ballard in his 1973 novel, Crash. The more ghoulish reports barely concentrated on the fact that three of Mansfield's five children, Mickey, Zoltan and Mariska, had been sleeping in the back, and emerged injured but alive. In fact, three-year-old Mariska rolled completely under the front seat, and was only found after emergency services had driven away from the scene, when one of her brothers realised she was missing. Mariska Hargitay is now 61. 'I don't remember the accident,' she told Vanity Fair. 'I don't even remember being told that my mother had died.' Today, she's a very successful actress, who since 1999 has played the lead, Olivia Benson, in the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – the longest-running character on primetime American drama in TV history. She won a Golden Globe for the role in 2005 and an Emmy in 2006. The Globe sits on her mantelpiece, next to the one her mother was awarded in 1957 as New Star of the Year – a moment when Mansfield's career was full of ballooning promise, before the demoralising blows and public rejection to come. Hargitay's very personal choice of directing debut is My Mom Jayne, an HBO documentary airing here on Sky, which has several overlapping objectives. It explores Mansfield's rollercoaster life from the poignant perspective of a daughter who barely remembers her. It delves into a complex family history, the by-product of Mansfield being married three times and having numerous significant affairs. It seeks, above all, to understand the person she was. 'My dad would always say…'She was like you,'' recalled Hargitay. ''She was funny and irreverent and fearless and real'… I just wanted my mom to be like the other moms. Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast? I just wanted a maternal mother image. I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.' Hargitay speaks to all of her siblings on camera, who let their customary guard down on this most painful of topics. She also interviews her mother's press secretary, Raymond Strait, who is still alive at 101 – a conversation that's not all sweetness and light, seeing as Strait published a tell-all biography, The Tragic Secret Life of Jayne Mansfield, in 2019. There is much to tell. When Mariska was born in 1964, Mansfield's career and her second marriage, to the Hungarian bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, were both on the rocks. This marked a saddening decline from her brightest years, when her star was in the ascendant, and America's armed forces couldn't get enough of her. Her appetite for publicity – and being photographed wherever she went – may even briefly have eclipsed that of Marilyn Monroe. Barely out of her teens, Mansfield – born Vera Jayne Palmer – had struck a deal with Hollywood to get famous, fast. She auditioned for Paramount in 1954, using a Joan of Arc monologue she'd hashed out with her acting coach Baruch Lumet (father of Sidney, the future director). Casting director Milton Lewis claimed she was wasting her 'obvious talents', and told her to return and do a scene from The Seven Year Itch. This required her to dye her hair blonde and, obviously, wear more revealing clothes. Eagerly, she consented. The competition with Monroe – and other female sex symbols of the day, such as Sophia Loren (who famously gave Mansfield 'the original side-eye' in a photograph in which the Italian actress is looking disdainfully at Mansfield's cleavage) – became something like a nuclear arms race. The goal was achieving (in every sense of the phrase) maximum exposure, including posing in Playboy magazine. Mansfield would often explain that her straining for the spotlight was merely plotted as a means to an end. But she never reached that end. She yearned, much like Monroe, to be taken seriously as an actor, seeing this quick-fix stardom as leverage to get her pick of the parts. In the process, she became the victim of her own success in Hollywood – so obliging at being sculpted into a Monroe-a-like that, ultimately, no one would let her escape being stereotyped as a 'dumb blonde' with particularly pneumatic measurements. It was all a performance, and one even her children found wearying at the time. Her oldest son, Mickey Jr, talks of rolling his eyes when he heard Jayne donning her trademark squeaky voice – not just in film roles, but her publicity interviews. Mansfield had been schooled by everyone around her to be this crowd-pleasing version of herself, without fail. But when she wanted to step outside that box, as Elizabeth Taylor (and indeed Monroe) were beginning to manage, she found no roles of substance awaiting her. The peak of her film career came early, in Frank Tashlin's satirical comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957), based on a play by Itch screenwriter George Axelrod. That same year, Mansfield was interviewed on CBC's Tabloid in Canada. 'I've used my pin-up-type publicity to get my foot in the door,' she explained. 'Because it never was really my ambition and now I feel I'm at a point where I can relax on the pin-up publicity – the cheesecake – and go much further dramatically… [it was] a means to an end, I don't know if I should say I liked it, but I felt it would do me some good as far as being recognised and being put into a position to be able to project myself for what I really wanted to attain.' One of those ambitions, she continued, was 'to win an Academy Award – at least one.' But, by 1963, after a spate of gritty noirs and international productions that did her few favours, she was reduced to baring everything in the sex comedy Promises! Promises!, which openly courted her Playboy fans – 'Now See ALL of Jayne Mansfield!'. In a slightly toe-curling encounter with Robert Robinson in 1960, Mansfield was asked to sum up what she felt was the secret of sex appeal. 'It's a wonderful, warm, womanly feeling,' she said. 'It has nothing to do with measurements and lipstick… it's the vibrancy you find present in a young kitten.' Following Promises! Promises!, Mansfield found it even harder to be taken seriously. She had studied piano and violin at school, talents she trotted out on the talk-show circuit to prove her intelligence (she apparently had an IQ of 163). The documentary has a clip of her performing Vivaldi, very impressively, on The Ed Sullivan Show. When she tried to repeat this for Jack Paar a few years later, he interrupted her with, 'Who cares? Kiss me!', to the delight of the crowd. She played along with giggles on air – but the implications were obvious. Keen as she was to orchestrate a shift in how the public perceived her, that ship had sailed. The bedrock of her marriage to Mickey Hargitay was crumbling at the same time, mainly because of her own infidelities. There were reasons for those, too – liaisons which (perhaps apocryphally; the rumour gets zero airtime in the documentary) may have included both Kennedy brothers. Mansfield's father had died when she was three years old – from a heart attack, while driving. In a freaky parallel with her three-year-old daughter's later experience, she was in the car. It doesn't take a psychology degree to puzzle out the paternal void this planted in her life, which she tried to fill with every man – husband, lover, whatever – who came along. Hargitay's siblings have few kind words to say about husband number three (the film director Matt Cimber, in a short-lived marriage marked by violent rages) or Mansfield's next relationship with her divorce attorney, Sam Brody, who died alongside her. The weirdest publicity stunt of Mansfield's career – if that indeed is what it was – happened the year before her death. While visiting the San Francisco Film Festival in 1966, she met a man called Anton LaVey, one of the most notorious characters on the counter-cultural scene. This self-styled founder of the Church of Satan did not convert her into worshipping the Devil, as has sometimes been claimed, but he did get Mansfield to hold a skull for one photoshoot, while he mimed some kind of ritual in a black cape. And he did place a curse on Brody – who was jealous of their friendship – claiming that the lawyer would be dead within a year. In a car crash. This occult myth is related at length in a hybrid documentary musical, the considerably-less-authorised Mansfield 66/67 (2017). A last shock lay in wait for Hargitay in adulthood. When she was 25, the head of one of her mother's fan clubs showed her a photo of a man named Nelson Sardelli, an Italian singer who was her own spitting image. Mansfield and he, it turned out, had a brief dalliance in 1963, and Hargitay was his biological daughter. After Mansfield's death, Mickey Jr, Zoltan and Mariska were raised by their father and stepmother, Ellen Siano. Only the two boys were Mickey Hargitay's own. Sardelli didn't want, he claims, to disrupt or meddle with his daughter's new chance for a happy childhood, so allowed the cover story to stand. Even when Mariska was told, she too kept the secret for years, after having it out with the man who raised her. 'It was all about loyalty,' she said to The Hollywood Reporter. 'Mickey didn't admit it to me… he said it wasn't true, and he was such a loyal human who I thought was the best father – I saw how much it hurt him in the moment of me confronting him.' It's just the final twist in a Hollywood life that has kept on entwining sadness and scandal long after it was shattered. My Mom Jayne is available on Sky Go and NOW
