Behind the 11th Hour Renewal for ‘Law & Order’ Season 26 – Hollywood Reporter
NBC executives say the late decision came down mostly to scheduling and budget concerns.
The detectives and prosecutors of Law & Order will remain on the job for another season.
NBC has renewed the long-running drama for a 26th installment in 2026-27, and the sixth season since L&O was revived in 2022. The pickup comes later than usual for Law & Order — the official word comes just before the start of NBCUniversal’s upfront presentation Monday. Its spinoff Law & Order: SVU was renewed in mid-April, and NBC’s three Chicago dramas — which, like the L&O franchise, come from Dick Wolf’s Wolf Entertainment — earned pickups near the end of March.
Law & Order will remain on Thursdays in NBC’s schedule for next season, but it’s moving from 8 to 10 p.m. — following rather than preceding SVU. A civilian version of The Traitors will lead off Thursdays in the fall.
The delay in renewing Law & Order came down to budget discussions and finding a place on the schedule, said Lisa Katz, president scripted content for NBC and Peacock.
“It’s funny that people were saying it was a bubble show,” Katz told reporters on a call about the 2026-27 schedule. “We love the show. We love the [Law & Order] block. It was very much a puzzle of figuring out what went where, and we have civilian Traitors coming in the fall. So it was just trying to put all the pieces [together] and figure out how many episodes and when they would come. But we’re very excited to have it back.”
The Surprising A-Listers Who Got Their Break on ‘Law & Order’: “A Rite of Passage” – Hollywood Reporter
How the franchise has been turning nobodies — like Samuel L. Jackson, Clare Danes, Adam Driver and Timothée Chalamet — into A-list actors for 35 years.
Before Timothée Chalamet set foot on Arrakis, before Pedro Pascal started battling post-apocalyptic fungi, before Bradley Cooper, Viola Davis and Samuel L. Jackson became Bradley Cooper, Viola Davis and Samuel L. Jackson, they all underwent the same New York actor initiation: showing up on Law & Order to get murdered, accused of murder, arrested, raped, stabbed, stalked, strangled or — in John Stamos’ case — commit condom-related crimes too weird to get into here.
Since the franchise began shooting on the streets of New York in 1990, it has become more than a rite of passage for hungry young actors — it’s become the East Coast’s most reliable incubator of future stars. Michael B. Jordan, Kerry Washington, Claire Danes, Idris Elba, J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, among scads of others, all got their start by getting interrogated by Jerry Orbach or Mariska Hargitay.
Of course, it wasn’t only unknowns who landed on the procedural as perps, victims and corpses. Established names wandered through, too: former child actors eager to prove they had a darker gear, comedians stretching dramatic muscles, even giant movie stars doing favors for their boyfriends. Julia Roberts, who was dating Benjamin Bratt at the time, dropped by the set in 1999 to play a glamorous party planner caught up in the murder of a powerful real estate mogul.
Still, it’s the bit players who later became big deals that make reruns extra eye-popping. So, what follows here is a who’s who of Law & Order guest stars, back when many of them were still nobodies.
Click link for more, but starts with Chadwick Boseman…
