LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM Host Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi Shares Insight into Season 1

The LAW & ORDER world expanded into podcasts in August with the launch of LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.

The first season of the unscripted series—which received a four-season order—has been exploring how the death of Carmine Galante spiraled into the Mafia Commission Trial, and its longstanding impact on organized crime.

The series, which utilizes first-hand accounts of the investigation, subsequent trial, and its fallout, is hosted by former Brooklyn homicide prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi. Here, she speaks with Give Me My Remote about working on the podcast, her own love of the LAW & ORDER franchise, and more.

How does your own history as a former homicide prosecutor impact the way you consume true crime stories? Are you someone who gravitates towards them or does it feel too much like your old day job?
A and B; both. I gravitate towards them because I’m very interested in them. I think that I always liked those shows and content from an interest perspective long before I ever decided to become a homicide prosecutor.

But I also at this point, certainly, when I was an actual prosecutor and on trial, one, I didn’t have time for any of that. But two, it just overtakes most of the hours in your day anyway. And I really couldn’t at those times even bear another minute of the darkness that is homicide. 

Now, it’s also that since I am involved in those [worlds], whether it’s television or podcasting, and I’m always involved on the production end as well—I’m very Type A, so I’m listening and relistening and rewatching—it’s just that I just need a headspace break, so I want to do anything but these days. But it is what I enjoy, actually, as a medium very often.

How did you get involved with this particular podcast?
It was a path that really presented itself. Wolf Entertainment was in the podcast space, but they had been thinking about branching LAW & ORDER into the space as well, specifically, Elliot Wolf, who runs all their streaming and much of this type of content, and Steven [Michael], who runs their audio [department]. They decided that they would do it, but that it would be a new vein of LAW & ORDER. So it would be its own thing.

Coming from my background, not only [as a] prosecutor, which they wanted, they wanted this to be not scripted. They wanted to be real stories told by real people. And so they decided someone hosting it [would be] involved on the backend of the production…Then also having worked in media, both in television and certainly podcasting, that it really fit. And we really hit it off right away. And we had a meeting of the minds, because the type of projects I get involved with have to meet my ethos. 

There’s not one size fits all for many people, so I don’t begrudge people for liking content, even in this space, that’s a little lighter. But coming from my background, that’s just not for me…I think [of] the many of the victims’ families that I’ve worked with over the years; I think it’s important that I present these cases a certain way. And LAW & ORDER has that same belief system in that. You can have light moments in anything, but remembering what this is all about, which is real people. And we really just hit it off. We have a lot of the same ideas about the type of content we wanted to create. That is how we ultimately formed this new team for LAW & ORDER.

There is a lightness at times to the podcast I didn’t expect—like when you mention the show is about to drop a bunch of names, but not to worry because there won’t be a quiz coming up. How much of that was natural versus impromptu?
It’s both. The beauty of podcasting is that it can be so many different things. There are podcasts that are just people talking, and that’s great. There are podcasts that are just scripted. Now this is tightly outlined-slash-scripted, in that we’ve really thought about how we want to tell the story, and words do matter. You want it to be concise. But there’s also, as you’re going through it, those moments that hit you as lighter moments; sometimes thought about in advance, and sometimes just as we’re recording. [When] it comes out, it’s like, let’s just actually add that in because it should be. 

I’m also a believer that when you are talking about very serious matters, it’s important to have those breath breaks, [which] is how I think about them. If something hits you as funny, you can have it be funny. The content isn’t funny, your story isn’t funny. But I always think about when I was on trial: It’s okay for jurors to laugh if a witness says something that struck them as funny, even though they’re talking about the most heinous crime under the sun. Because they’re not laughing about that. They know what to take seriously. But your brain almost needs to release that tension. So I’m a believer that if it presents itself, that it should be interspersed when appropriate.

Before you started hosting the podcast, how much did you know about this particular case?
I knew almost nothing about it. I was a homicide prosecutor for 16 of my 21 years, and my involvement with organized crime anything had to do with when members of organized crime killed or were involved as witnesses or on the victim end [of a crime]. So really no different than any other case, except they happen to also have that affiliation. I learned a little bit about it that way. 

Also being in this world of law enforcement and prosecution, I know a lot of people that work all the time [on those cases], but I myself had really never done a lot of organized crime work. But the Wolf team originally was really interested in starting with organized crime. And it made perfect sense, because it is the largest criminal organization, arguably, ever to be in New York. So it was a great place to start. 

But that was the fun of it was doing the research and seeing like, where should we begin? And that really was very collaborative in going through it. It just seemed that the Commission case, which is kind of the centerpiece of our story—we start before in time, and we also moved beyond it towards the end of the season—it was the case that really changed the playing field for law enforcement and the prosecution of these organizations because it was the first time you really got at the whole thing by getting at the top. So it was really apparent what our focus should be as we did the research.

What surprised you the most about your case during your research process?
Not a lot surprises me on cases, to be very honest with you; I really have seen just about it all in one shape or form. I kind of wish I was more surprised than I am, but I’ve seen a lot of things. 

I think what did surprise me, specific to organized crime and these people and the cases that we focus on in the season, was it’s like a spiderweb. First of all, it is the most names I’ve ever had to wrap my head around and figure out who’s related to who—and I don’t mean actually by blood, but within the organizations—and this one’s name comes up, but he’s going to pop up again because he was also involved in something that happened a couple years later. It is this spiderweb that keeps circling back on itself. And it just has this incredible web of players, characters, storylines—except, unfortunately, it’s very real—that just keep winding around one another. And that proved to be much closer to reality than I expected.

And a lot of the mob-related people have what appear to be ridiculous nicknames. Which ones were the most difficult to get through? 
It’s funny. We just had this conversation…because sometimes you’re like, “Stop. That’s not really the name, right? No, really. His name was Sammy Meatballs?!” Like, that was just one that I was recording. But that’s really the nickname of this person. So, like, do we call that out and say, “You gotta be kidding sometimes with the nicknames?” Benny Eggs! They’re funny, but they come from somewhere…[there] are certain ones I was like, “I just can’t.” [Laughs.] But they’re real. So I just think last week it was Benny Eggs and Sammy Meatballs. And most episodes have a few similar nicknames that you just wonder, was it meant in seriousness, or was there humor when this person got this nickname, that stuck for years?

What can you tease about the rest of the season?
I think I can tease that it’s far from over. You know, we made the Commission case the centerpiece of this season because it changed the game for law enforcement and prosecutors. However, the mob was wounded, but they were far from dead. No pun intended there. And they pivoted. You know, they continued to pivot. So law enforcement had to keep coming up with new approaches to tackle them, and we get into that in the back end of the season. So it’s far from over. 

It really kind of brings us into more present times by the end of the season, but it’s really focusing on the mafia in New York and how law enforcement tackled them post the success of the commission case.

LAW & ORDER is such an iconic franchise, and there are three active shows right now with the mothership, SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, and ORGANIZED CRIME. What does it mean to you to be a part of this brand?
From my fangirl perspective, it is the greatest project I could have been asked to do. And I mean that. Because I’m a LAW & ORDER fan, way before I was even a prosecutor. And as a prosecutor—I was telling them this when we started working together [at Wolf Entertainment]—there are multiple articles and newspapers quoting me, and they asked me about the shows I watched and the characters; I just bring up LAW & ORDER all the time, because I watched it all the time. It was my relaxing thing to do after I would get home from a long day because LAW & ORDER is always on somewhere. So I’d just watch it. 

It’d be fun to see if I could recognize the cases [when watching episodes], but I like the way that they tackled them. A lot of it really is very true to life with that bit of creative Hollywood flair that they are entitled to in the space. So getting to work with the Wolf Entertainment team, and specifically on this new life of LAW & ORDER, is very exciting to me.

Okay, then I have to ask who your favorite LAW & ORDER franchise character is and why?
Oh my gosh, that’s not even fair! That’s not fair! Over time, there have been so many…I could start with Michael Moriarty [who played Executive ADA Ben Stone on the mothership] and Mariska Hargitay [who plays Captain Olivia Benson on SVU], of course. For me, watching [Benson] evolve from the girl in the boys’ room as a character into the one running it all—as a woman, I love that. I love seeing not only that they went with the empowerment stance, but how successful that has become. 

And through that [Hargitay] personally—and also through the world of LAW & ORDER—they’ve really given back to this world that I care very much about, which is the world of criminal justice. She, through Joyful Heart Foundation, gives back to the very people that she represents with her character on SVU.

Looking ahead, with at least three more seasons to go on the show, what kind of cases are you hoping to tackle?
As many areas as we can…I’ve been asked so many times, “What’s your favorite case you have prosecuted?” There’s never one, right? They all mean something to me for a different reason. And I think the same thing, the beauty of LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM as a series, is that we can focus on really any aspect within the criminal justice system—those that come to mind quickly, such as organized crime and obviously murder and these different veins that are talked about all the time, but there are so many other areas that are also impacted. And the beauty is that each season, we can tackle a different one of them. Some that are expected, and some that are unexpected. Like we have a laundry list right now, so it’s basically where to go next, not what should we do—what can we do next, because there’s just so many things to choose from.

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