After so many hours of marathon Law & Order: Special Victims Unitviewers eventually begin to wonder: How do actors convincingly play corpses? And do they get breather breaks?
luckily Ask us is here to find the answer. It turns out that it is not easy to control the twitching of the eyelids, the slight inhalation or even, in close-up, the pulsating vein, which is why some actors specialize.
While giving us a tour for NBC St. Denis Medicalcast member Mekki Lipper recalled a conversation with one such corpse king: “The actor told me he auditions for corpses all the time and always records them.”
The professional has an impeccable strategy for determining when to breathe. “He holds his breath as long as he can and listens to the scene over and over again,” Lipper explained. “When the main character speaks, he knows that this person is going to be on camera. Then he takes a quick breath.”
Although skill is required, many people seem to have a death wish. Marishka Hargitay said Seth Meyers that the stars always ask her for a Law & Order: SVU a place for guests — like a lifeless body.
“All the famous people, you know what they want? To be a dead body,” she said during an interview in October. “It’s so weird.”
Myers, however, didn’t think it was so strange. He revealed that he was among the celebrities who asked to play dead on the NBC show.
“I wanted to be a dead body. During the writers’ strike of 2007-2008. met all these Law and order writers and I was like, ‘I want to do a cameo, but I just want to be a dead body,'” Meyers recalled. “And they were like, ‘Oh my God, we’d love to have you on the show.’ But I was like, ‘Okay, but I’m a dead guy.’
His agent sent him a script, but Meyers was disappointed to find that there would be lines to memorize. “I was like, ‘I don’t want lines, I just want to be a dead man in the park.’
Hargitay revealed that the same thing happened to another A-lister recently.
“This just happened to me with a big supermodel… I found out she liked my show. So I said, “Oh my God!” I went to the writers and said, “Can she be on the show?” And she said she wanted to be a dead body, but then I said, ‘No, no, we’ve got this great role for you,'” Hargitay recalled. “I called her back and said, ‘Look, we got it. We’ll put you on the show. She says, “Oh no! No, no, no, no, no, I want to be a dead body.
She joked: “It happens all the time! Why don’t these famous people ask for lines?’
