Sam Waterston Is Still the Face of ‘Law & Order’
The New York Times
The actor originally signed on for only one season as Jack McCoy but became synonymous with the series, which returns Feb. 24. “It’s nice to come back and just witness the thing we made,” he said.
“Law & Order” premiered on NBC in 1990. A procedural that was really two procedurals conjoined, the first half of each episode focused on the investigation of a crime, the second on the prosecution of the accused. Among the original cast members was Michael Moriarty, who played an assistant district attorney. During the fourth season, under clouded circumstances, Moriarty left.
As Dick Wolf, who created “Law & Order,” tells it, Warren Littlefield, NBC’s president, questioned whether the show could continue. Wolf thought that it could. “I’ve got two words for you,” he says he told Littlefield. Those words? “Sam Waterston.”
Waterston, who had just wrapped the NBC civil rights drama “I’ll Fly Away,” hadn’t been looking for a procedural. Having begun his career as a classical actor, he never really expected to work in television. Still, he agreed — in the short-term, anyway — signing a one-year contract in 1994 to play the principled assistant district attorney Jack McCoy.
