LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT Post-Mortem: Peter Scanavino on What’s Next for Rollisi

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, April 22 episode of LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT.]

LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT’s Carisi (Peter Scanavino) and Rollins (Kelli Giddish) were forced to contend with their relationship—kind of—in the Thursday, April 22 episode, “In The Year We All Fell Down.”

Rollins brought her dad, Jim (James Morrison), up to New York to rehab after his mini-stroke, but things quickly took a turn when he had a fall—and another stroke.

Throughout the ordeal, people kept assuming the duo were a couple, from her father and his wife to healthcare workers. And as Rollins was struggling, Carisi blew off a date with his new girlfriend, Nicole (Suzette Gunn), to stay by her side.

“It’s interesting: When you add a girlfriend or another person into a relationship that is very strong, I think it can do two things: it can either solidify, oh, we’re just friends, this is who we’re going to be,” Scanavino says. “Or, especially at our age, we’re not 20-year-olds on the show…that might accelerate [things, like], hold on, let’s get serious about what we are and what we want to be. So that could be the impetus to act on something you’ve been holding back on.”

But even if Rollins was to straight-up say she wanted a relationship with him, Scanavino said he wasn’t sure how Carisi would respond to that.

“I think in the season finale last year, she was asking him to go out, and he said no,” he notes. “That was coming from a place of wanting to protect himself, because…this relationship, if anything were to happen, it would be pretty serious. It wouldn’t just be, oh, we made out. I don’t think he sees it as [something that could be casual]; it’s a serious thing for him. He’s being a bit protective of himself, which you do sometimes, when you’re not sure how things are landing on the other side.”

An unlikely bit of potential inspiration for the ADA? The relationship between his former boss Olivia (Mariska Hargitay) and her former partner Elliot (Christopher Meloni). In a scene earlier in the series—that was deleted for time—Olivia talked to Carisi about the parallels between the duos…and now he is witnessing it himself.

“It is interesting, that scene that you reference, when she [said], ‘I know what it was like to be close to a partner,’ and she was referencing somebody that I had no understanding of,” Scanavino says. “But now that I’ve actually met that person, in the world of the show, maybe it gives me a little bit more perspective, and that can open up more personal conversations between me and Benson. Because I think we have a very, very close friendship, as well as very good professional relationship on the show.”

“But now as I’m kind of involved in both worlds, I can step back and say, ‘Oh, I see what you’re talking about now,'” he continues. “And then maybe that makes me open up about things more than I have in the past with her.”

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

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