Kelli Giddish is back where she started. As Law & Order: SVU wraps its 27th season, the 46-year-old actor said she is back home on the long-running NBC drama and reflected on returning as a series regular after first leaving the show in December 2022.
“Sixteen years later, not only am I still on it, it’s still going strong,” Giddish said, underscoring just how long the show has remained a fixture in her career. The season finale of SVU airs Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, and the show is set to resume shooting for season 28 in July.
Giddish first joined the series in 2011 as Amanda Rollins, stepping into a cast that was adjusting after Christopher Meloni had exited as Elliot Stabler. She had been guest starring on The Good Wife when the opportunity came up, and she moved her life from Los Angeles to New York after signing on. The role became a defining one for her, and she said the timing of her return makes sense inside what she called “the Dick Wolf Universe.”
“When they form relationships with people, you have faith and trust that if there’s a spot for you that opens up back in the family, they’ll invite you back. And if it’s right for your time, for your life, then you can take them up on it,” Giddish said. She added that leaving and coming back gave her something she would not have had otherwise: time at home with her third child, son Oldie, whom she welcomed with husband Beau in June 2023. “To leave and come back, it was kind of fortunate timing for me because I got to have my third baby, and for the first time I got to stay at home with my baby,” she said.
That break, she said, lasted until her son was a year old. Then she returned full time. Giddish also shares sons Ludo, 10, and Charlie, 7, and said the comeback felt immediate once she was back on set. “I’m looking forward to next season already. It’s going to be fun. And coming back this year, I say it’s like riding a bike, but it’s so fun to work there and to be with my crew that I’ve known forever. Their kids were this big when I started, and now they’re getting married. It’s crazy. I’m so fortunate to have these relationships,” she said.
Her path to SVU stretches back even farther than 2011. Giddish said she met former showrunner Warren Light when she was 18 at a playwrights conference in Indiana, and he remembered her 10, 11, 12 years later and thought of her for the role. She also said she was not deep into television when she signed on and knew only that Meloni was leaving and producers needed actors to fill out the transition. In her telling, even then the formula mattered. “Well, I mean, Mariska [Hargitay] is great, but they’re messing with the whole formula between those two? It may not last,” she said. Fifteen years later, her answer is on screen: she is back, the show is still on, and the next run is already set to begin in July.
