Rollins breaks down recalling Carisi’s hostage situation in ‘Law & Order: SVU’ 1st look: EXCLUSIVE
Amanda Rollins’ return to “Law & Order: SVU” this week will be an emotional one — for personal and professional reasons.
The former Special Victims Unit detective-turned-Intelligence sergeant, played by Kelli Giddish, reflects on the events of a robbery from a few months ago involving her husband, ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi (Peter Scanavino).
In the November “SVU” fall finale, “Cornered,” Carisi’s morning visit to his bodega ended with him getting caught in the crosshairs of a robbery that evolved into a hostage situation. Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) called in Rollins to assist the SVU team in trying to save one of their own. Throughout the ordeal, Carisi saw one guy take a woman into a back room to assault her and another man, who returns in the April 3 episode, shoot and kill the cashier, with whom Carisi was friendly.
In tonight’s episode, “Accomplice Liability,” Carisi steps out of his prosecutor role to serve as a witness in the trial.
TODAY.com’s exclusive first look at the episode shows Rollins on the stand preparing to testify about what she saw the day of the robbery with Counselor Camille Rourke (Stacey Farber).
Rollins begins by recalling the hostages, including Carisi.
Rourke asks Rollins, who was stationed outside the deli at the time of the hostage situation, what she heard, and Rollins says a gunshot.
“At first, there was no information on who had even been hit,” she says.
“And what did that make you think?” Rourke asks.
Rollins takes a pause and begins to tear up.
“I thought my husband had been killed,” she answers, visibly crying while the counselor asks if she needs some privacy.
“That whole day, I wasn’t sure if I was going to see my husband again, and I’m not sure that I have yet,” she says through tears. “Part of him is still trapped in that deli.”
“He is not going to be free until you win this case,” Rollins adds, to which Rourke says she will try her best.
“So will I,” Rollins responds. “Not on the stand.”
“I need to be strong for him,” she says, as she gets up and exits the courtroom.
Giddish, who announced in August 2022 she was leaving her full-time role on “SVU,” has since made multiple guest appearances on the show, including in Season 26 before this week’s episode.
Scanavino previously described the state of the Carisi/Rollins relationship in a January interview with TODAY.com. He said it was “still very solid,” but like with any relationship, “you deal with issues and things as they come up.”
As for getting to work with Giddish again, Scanavino said: “When we used to see each other every day, it was — you kind of have a more casual relationship, but now it’s kind of more, ‘What’s going on in your life? How are the kids?’”
After a first day of “catching up,” he said, “then we kind of fall right back into how we were on the show, which was really, really, really close friends.”
He also said Carisi was “carrying around a lot of anger about what happened in that deli and also how the case is going to progress in the future.”
Viewers can see how that anger manifests in the April 3 episode by tuning in to NBC at 9 p.m. ET.
