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

CSU Technician Burt Trevor (Season 3, Episode 13, "Prodigy")
“What I remember was I was in desperate need of a job. My agent called me and said, ‘You’re going to audition for LAW & ORDER: SVU again.’ I said okay, I audition, I get cast and I go to work—the same day. They had fired somebody or [it wasn’t working out]…my role was every three episodes, I’d have like a 15-second scene…it paid my rent! I did [more than a dozen] episodes over the course of two-and-a-half years. I was never a series regular, I just recurred on the show. That’s my biggest memory: The way I got the job. I got the audition, prepared it, got cast, went to work, all in one day. That’s never happened. That’s the one time it happened in my career.

I was terrified. I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t worked much on TV up to that point in my career. At one point I was freaking out, I had to hold the prop at a certain angle so the camera could see it—a glass bottle. I was showing Chris Meloni and Mariska Hargitay...something about how I had broken this bottle.

In that particular scene, I was losing my mind, because I couldn’t do it and hit my mark at the same time. I started freaking out thinking, ‘Chris hates me, Mariska hates me. They’re going to never invite me back.’ And Chris said—I didn’t know he knew my name at this point—and he did this gesture [to calm down and breathe] and [whispered], ‘It’s all right,’ and then I breathed and I was able to proceed with my performance.

I thought I was pissing them off because their days are long! They want their guest stars to come in, break the bottle, hit their marks. But I think he could see I was having a meltdown and gave me a look and a gesture and it was exactly what I needed. It gave me the space to find myself on his set.” (Photo credit: Screengrab/NBC)