With all the out-of-work actors in New York City, you’d think it’d be easier for the Law & Order franchise not to cast the same actors in multiple parts. (Or maybe the L&O world just has a higher preponderance of twins? Or some sort of government cloning program?)
Whatever the reason, many Law & Order stars have pulled double, triple, quadruple, even quintuple duty on the original NBC series and its spinoffs, as you’ll see below. Peter Scanavino, for example, has played five characters on shows across the franchise, while Camryn Manheim has played four characters on just the original-flavor Law & Order.
“My first job out of NYU was on Law & Order back in 1991, 30 years ago,” Manheim told reporters at a panel last February (per Showbiz Cheat Sheet). “It’s hard to believe. I came back as three different characters on Law & Order through the years. It was a badge of honor to be able to be in an off-Broadway play or a Broadway play and say that you’d been on Law & Order and then how many times you’d been on Law & Order. And I still have the programs that [say]: ‘I want to thank my mom,’ dah, dah, dah, ‘Law & Order three times.’”
Here are details on their characters and the other Law & Order doppelgängers we’ve seen on both sides of the prison bars.