Photo credit: ©Michael Bulbenko for the Paley Center
Cast members from four “Wolf Pack” shows—a nickname for those TV series created by uber-producer Dick Wolf—gathered in Los Angeles on Saturday night to salute the boss during the annual PaleyFest television festival. Held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, the panel discussion featured Wolf, along with actors from Law & Order: SVU (Ice T), Chicago Fire (Taylor Kinney and Jesse Spencer), Chicago P.D. (Jason Beghe and Sophia Bush) and his latest Windy City-based installment, Chicago Med (Colin Donnell, Torrey DeVitto, Oliver Platt and S. Epatha Merkerson).
The audience in the packed theater was the perfect visual representation of why Wolf’s shows have traditionally done so well in terms of ratings and longevity. Wolf described his shows as “old-fashioned broadcast television” that cut a wide swath through the American audience. Younger fans in the theater loudly cheered for Bush, Spencer and Kinney, while OG L&O fans were there to support longtime castmembers Ice T and Merkerson, who began on the original Law & Order series as Lt. Van Buren, and now plays the chief hospital administrator on Chicago Med.
The Salute to Dick Wolf was every bit as fun and nostalgic as it should have been. Here are five fun facts we learned on the red carpet and in the theater.
1. Wolf Films is more than a cottage industry.
The panelists onstage joked about who hadn’t appeared on a Law & Order show (check out reruns for guest turns by Sarah Paulson, Julie Bowen, Jim Gaffigan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and countless others). Wolf then threw out this mind-boggling statistic: His three New York shows and his three Chicago shows combined have featured 40,000 speaking actors.
2. This is Ice T’s fifth show with Dick Wolf.
In addition to Law & Order: SVU, Ice T’s appeared on three episodes of Wolf’s New York Undercover (1994-98); one episode of the short-lived 1996 series Swift Justice; all 18 episodes of the single-season show Players (1997-98) and Exiled (A 1998 Law & Order TV Movie starring Chris Noth). “I played a cop on New Jack City, but I never thought I would be on television,” Ice T told Paste backstage. “Now I’m like the longest-running black male cop in history. Imagine that… and Ice T? How did that happen?” (Merkerson’s Lt. Anita Van Buren is the longest-running African-American character on television.)
We also learned a bit of good news for fans of Ice T—the musician. “Bodycount did an album last year called Manslaughter, and we’re doing a new album. We’re getting ready to start on that later this summer… it’s just mayhem and carnage,” he said backstage. “It’s called Bloodlust.”
3. What’s the secret to Dick Wolf’s success?
We asked several actors backstage to give us their best guesses on Wolf’s formula for success. “If we knew that, we’d all be the most successful television producers of all time,” Sophia Bush joked. “I think Dick really is attuned to what works. He has strong opinions, but is also very collaborative, which so many people, when they get tremendously successful, are not; and then they run their shows into the ground. He really is a pleasure to work for and I’m thrilled that his universe keeps growing and [thrilled] to be a part of it.”