LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT: Octavio Pisano Reflects on the Importance of ‘Once Upon a Time in El Barrio’

As LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT’s Detective Velasco navigated his first year at the One-Six, one of his defining moments with the squad was equally important to the actor tasked with portraying him, Octavio Pisano.

In season 23’s “Once Upon a Time in El Barrio,” Velasco’s former priest reached out to the detective, determined to try and save a trio of trafficked young women. Velasco asks his boss, Captain Benson (Mariska Hargitay), for help, and they are able to save two of the girls—and take down a corrupt fellow cop.

The hour also shed a little more light on Velasco’s background—including his priest calling him José, instead of the Americanized version of his name, Joe.

“That’s something that I personally connect to very deeply, because I always get the question, ‘How do you pronounce your name?'” Pisano notes. “I’ve had managers in the past suggest I change my name and make it more Americanized. I’m named after my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. So for me, it was very, very important to keep my name, and I think that I understand exactly what Joe had to go through.”

Notably, “I did get to collaborate with the writers a lot on this,” Pisano says. “I grew up in Tijuana, which is another border town; he grew up in Juárez. Being in between worlds, being both American and Mexican, speaking both languages, understanding both cultures, and just witnessing the crimes that he did—which I can relate to—it was just a very, very special and personal episode for me.”

“I feel like that subject matter, especially right now, it’s so important,” he continues. “In Mexico, we had a lot of women being kidnapped and we never find their bodies or it’s even more tragic and we find them in pieces. And it’s just so relevant to speak on that. And also brave, because they go in…and it’s tough to watch. It was tough to shoot. But same time, at the end of it, the light is there, and there’s closure.”

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

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