LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT 25th Anniversary: Stars and Guest Stars Recall Their First Days on Set

Mike Duarte (Season 24, Episode 2, "The One You Feed")
“Oh my God. I mean, I can be completely honest with you: I went in and I can't believe I'm going to be working with Mariska. And you have all of these ideas sometimes as an actor—it's a lot of visualization and a lot of imagining of what you're going to do. And I got on, and I did my thing, but what I noticed is that the pace that that show is shot with Mariska at the helm is…Oh, my God. It is one of the fastest-moving shows. It is literally like being in the center of a tornado. Things are moving, you're learning—seven pages of lines that are delivered like a symphony. This thing is down to a science, 25 years later. Which, you know, it's always been. There's obviously many geniuses behind that show.
But I remember I went back home after the first day, and I had my partner with me, and I was like, ‘Literally, cancel everything. I'm gonna revamp myself in this script and in this role, because these lines are moving at a buck a minute. That camera is moving, and when it's on, you've got to be on point. When it is away from you, you have to be throwing the lines so the person is catching it.’
It's like you're playing with a hand grenade. And you're tossing it off to one another, because the camera is swiping and moving and you're saying this very big exposition in a very short frame of time, and you have to be eloquent. You have so many variables that you're dealing with. It made it an absolute blast…but a hard one.” (Photo by: Michael Greenberg/NBC)