Series showrunner Michele Fazekas says she has reached out to get Meloni back on the show but notes that the actor is “very busy.”
Michele Fazekas is trying to give the people what they want, but it’s a little out of her control.
Fazekas, the showrunner of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, is aware that fans feel very passionately about Detective Olivia Benson’s (Mariska Hargitay) relationship with her ride-or-die former partner, Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni). Viewers have been beating that drum since the series debuted in 1999 and all these years later, Fazekas is still looking for ways to capitalize on their addictive chemistry.
During a recent sit-down with PEOPLE, Frazekas was asked about what kind of storylines she’s eager to explore— and immediately pointed in the direction of Benson and Stabler.
“Obviously, everyone’s always asking me about Stabler, and I love Meloni,” Fazekas told the outlet. “I would use him as much as he wants to. I tried to!”
Though Meloni officially departed the show in 2011, he has since returned to reunite the dynamic duo. For a time, he also reclaimed his place in the Law and Order family by leading his own spinoff show, Organized Crime, which ran for five seasons starting in 2021. The show’s cancellation was confirmed in April.
Meanwhile, fans have devoured every instance they get of the duo reunited onscreen. But Frazekas admitted that those occasions are always a challenge to orchestrate.
“[Meloni’s] very, very busy,” Frazekas pointed out. “I tried to bring him into this. I’ll just sometimes ask the question like, ‘Hey, is he working?’ “It’s like, ‘Oh yes, of course he’s working.'”
Luckily, SVU fans are no stranger to exerting patience: Meloni’s initial return to the franchise came after a 10 year stretch. A decade after his abrupt retirement, Stabler joined forces with his former partner, Benson, to solve his wife’s murder.
In all their years sharing the screen, Benson and Stabler have never gone beyond flirting with the idea of a romantic relationship. However, they did get very close to sealing the deal, nearly locking lips in a much-hyped season 24 episode. But the moment was tragically nixed at the last second.
“To be honest with you, Chris and I thought it should go one way and the powers that be didn’t, so it got changed at the last minute, that near kiss,” Hargitay revealed in 2024. “Obviously Dick [Wolf, the show’s creator] gets final say. It’s his show and he didn’t want that.”
SVU recently entered its 27th season. Following the cancellation of his spinoff, Meloni is now set to star in new Hulu series The Land from This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman.
