LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT: Peter Scanavino on the Complicated Rollisi Dynamic

After LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT’s Rollins (Kelli Giddish) had to rush out of town to take care of her father, she’s back in New York for the Thursday, April 22 episode, “In The Year We All Fell Down”–with Jim (James Morrison) in tow.

However, things take a turn when her father ends up back in the hospital—and she has to lean on her longtime friend/maybe more Carisi (Peter Scanavino).

“It’s interesting, because what Rollins and Carisi have been for each other is the most stable relationship in each other’s lives for the past few years,” Scanavino notes. “And as you get older, those relationships become more and more important: the person that you can always lean on. And you feel a dedication to that person or responsibility for that person. So I think they’ve really developed that.”

But it’s not always sustainable, he notes. “That obviously gets complicated when somebody else comes in, whether it’s romantic or platonic. You start having to shift your attention, in a way.”

The duo have been in a kind of limbo, especially in the nearly two years since he left the force/severed their professional partnership and became an ADA. While they remain close, what they are has never exactly been defined.

“Clearly, in this episode Carisi says, ‘You know what, no matter what, I’ll be there for Rollins, because she is there for me in the same way; we’re both the shoulders that we lean on,'” Scanavino says. “Now, maybe that’s going to create some problems in future relationships. But as of now, that’s not even a question for him about being there for Rollins.”

And that future relationship isn’t just a hypothetical: viewers were introduced to his girlfriend, Nicole (Suzette Gunn), in the last episode. But with Rollins out of town—and getting the call about her father’s help when he previously tried to tell her—that entanglement is something she’s still in the dark about.

“He was trying to tell her a couple episodes ago; he just wanted to bring it up,” Scanavino says. “What he was trying to say was, ‘I know we’re not a couple…,’ but he was acknowledging that there was something else there that wasn’t, ‘Oh, we’re just friends.’ Because if they were just friends, it wouldn’t have been a big deal at all. And it was kind of that awkward feeling where we’re not this, but we’re also not this other thing, but I’m not sure what we are, and I just feel a responsibility to tell you this. So he was going to tell her that. And then she gets this horrible news about her father. She was gone last episode, and now here we are again.”

Understandably, he’s hesitant to fill her in now. “He doesn’t think this is the right time to bring it up, because maybe it is going to be something that she’s sad about,” Scanavino notes. “I think he just wants to put all the focus on her and what she’s dealing with, and get it off himself.”

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC

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