Law & Order’s Hugh Dancy: Price’s Massive, Personal Loss Leaves Him ‘Pretty Tormented’ as the Season Continues
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Thursday’s Law & Order. Proceed accordingly.
As Manhattan County executive assistant district attorney, Law & Order‘s Nolan Price has a front-row seat to suffering and conflict every day in the courtroom. The pain and grief in this week’s episode, however, originated from within the lawyer’s own family.
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Earlier this season, the show established that Price’s father had been in poor health and was living in a nursing home-like facility for some time. In Thursday’s episode, the older man died after Nolan — who was his father’s healthcare proxy — finally agreed to end his suffering by opting out of life-extending care.
The decision was precipitated by a visit from Nolan’s brother, Thomas, played by Shameless alum Justin Chatwin. Thomas urged his brother not to have doctors fit their dad with a feeding tube when he lost the ability to swallow; instead, Thomas reasoned, it was more humane to begin palliative care for their father.
As Nolan struggled, he also argued a case in which a daughter (played by Scandal‘s Katie Lowes) helped her father, who’d been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, kill himself. Initially, Price vehemently refused to entertain the idea of a plea deal for the daughter; when Sam pointed out that he was under a lot of pressure, he maintained his personal life had “nothing to do with this.”
Eventually, Nolan changed his mind both about the plea deal and his father’s future; the episode’s final scene was of the Price brothers packing up their father’s belongings after his death. “We did the right thing,” Thomas assured Nolan. But Nolan didn’t want to talk about it, and blew off Thomas’ invitation to hang out in favor of returning to the office.
We checked in with Hugh Dancy, who plays the beleaguered ADA, on how a grieving Price will fare as the season continues. Read on for his thoughts.
TVLINE | This was a rough one for poor Nolan, my goodness.
Yes. [Laughs]
TVLINE | The show has been hinting for a while now about what’s going on in Nolan’s family life. I’m wondering if you talked with the producers or writers about how much Price’s personal life has been weighing on him this season.
Yeah, we talked a bit about it, especially when I knew this episode was coming up. The conversations initially were mostly focused on the fact of these two brothers who just had very different feelings about how best to care for their father. It seemed to me, and not just me, that a huge part of that — even if it almost entirely goes unspoken — would be the fact that they already lost a brother way too young, and they lost him to addiction… There’s so much guilt and self-laceration, and it’s a drawn-out thing. I thought that that’s bound to tie into this feeling of not wanting to let somebody go, or having conflicting feelings about how best you care for somebody and all the rest of it.
TVLINE | If there were a word I’d apply to Nolan, it would be ‘brittle.’ And this whole experience doesn’t seem like it’s going to make him any more flexible. There’s still such a tension in him by the end of the episode. He doesn’t have a big catharsis here, the way that, for instance, Sam did at the end of her tough episode at the beginning of the season. So my very long way around to this question is: How is he going to be doing for the rest of the season?
[Laughs] I mean, I think he is who he is. You’re right: I think about him, somebody who is very committed to his work and the idea of what he’s doing — namely, trying to get justice for people — resonates strongly with him. We talked about that when we were talking about this episode . Like, what drives somebody? Why are you pouring all of your stuff into your work like? What is that stuff? Again, you go back to the family. He takes take it seriously. I also think that the relaxation that he has comes from knowing that he’s really good at his job, [Laughs] which is probably another reason why he’s something close to workaholic. But no, I don’t think this is gonna break him open, for lots of reasons. Because a) that’s not really how the show goes, right? We’re not here to track Nolan Price’s meltdown.
TVLINE | Dude, maybe you are not here to track Nolan Price’s meltdown. I am 100 percent here for it!
[Laughs] No, look: I’m here for it. But more prosaically, he ends up not much less conflicted than he was at the beginning. He’s changed his mind on one level but it’s not like a weight off his shoulders. There’s no form of closure. He’s very conflicted about it, and I think he’s pretty tormented — as, understandably, almost anybody would. He’s had to make an end-of-life decision for a parent. And the way he’s gonna deal with that is brushing off his brother and going back to work.
TVLINE | Along those lines: Do we see Thomas again, in what you’ve shot so far?
I haven’t shot anymore with Justin since we made that episode, but that’s not to say it wouldn’t happen. I don’t know that it’s planned, but I would be delighted and wouldn’t be surprised.
TVLINE | You brought it up, but as he deals with this moving forward, I don’t think it’s possible for Nolan to throw himself into work more.
It’s also a side effect — the show has, for years, very famously, Dick Wolf’s motto is like, “We don’t follow these characters home. They don’t have a personal life. And that’s just the nature, the shape of the show. So understanding a character to be a workaholic, which I do, is almost like reverse-engineered from that basic fact about the show. But again, the show only works, for me, if I think of him as somebody who’s very, very committed to what he does. I’ve spoken to a few people with prosecutors and defensive attorneys, and that’s not that’s not totally unusual.
TVLINE | What are your thoughts about — when and if Nolan does want to talk with someone — whether he’d lean toward Baxter or Sam?
[Laughs] That’s a really good question. Any version of those things seem quite funny to me. I think he’s very guarded. I mean, he does talk to Sam about it briefly in this episode. I mean, she’s the person who, it’s late night, they’re getting takeaway [food], they’ve gotta into the early hours — it makes sense. But I think that it just so happens that they’re sitting in that room like three minutes after he had a screaming match with his brother. So, she happened to be there at exactly the right time.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Let us know in the comments!
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